According to CAPA India, the combination of India’s outbound potential, supplemented by other South Asian countries as extension markets and the opportunity to capture intercontinental transfer traffic via Indian hubs, makes this arguably one of the most exciting long-haul markets in the world. Indian carriers currently only have around 65 widebodies (of which some are not operational). In contrast, the ME carriers have close to 500 widebodies, of which more than 250 are with Emirates alone. As a result, 6th freedom carriers accounted for the dominant share of long-haul traffic (64%) and ultra-long-haul traffic (80%) to/from India prior to the pandemic.