Tag Archives: civil aviation policy

The new Civil Aviation Policy gives a boost to the domestic aviation sector by offering auctioning of unilateral traffic rights and tax incentives. Under the new policy, domestic airlines will be free to enter into code-share agreements with foreign carriers for any destination within India on a reciprocal basis. In fact, the policy has completely liberalised international code share between Indian and foreign carriers. Government will also liberalise the regime of bilateral rights, which in turn would lead to greater ease of doing business and wider choice to passengers. The policy also proposes real time safety tracking. The Civil Aviation Policy is aimed at creating an eco-system to handle 300 million domestic passengers by 2022 and 500 million by 2027, and 200 million international travellers by 2027. India recorded around 139.32 million domestic and over 50 million international air travellers in 2014-15.    

The Union Cabinet has given a go-ahead to the much-awaited Civil Aviation Policy, which is believed to bring many passenger friendly measures, promote regional connectivity and give the much-needed boost to the domestic aviation sector. The policy draft was first unveiled by the NDA government in November 2014, and was subsequently replaced with another draft in October 2015. The policy was to be implemented in the last financial year, but there were delays on account of difficulties in striking a balance between different key stakeholders, over issues like 5/20 rule that allows a carrier to fly abroad only if it has 20 aircraft and has flown domestic for five years.