India Simplifies Process for Airlines to Start International Flights

Jun. 12—NEW DELHI — The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has simplified the process for Indian airlines to add foreign destinations, the regulator said today.

"...the current 33 point checklist has been rationalised and reduced to a 10 point checklist related to their preparedness for the intended operations, removing other generic and redundant provisions in the existing checklist," the civil aviation regulator said.

In order to further ease the process for grant of such permission the existing regulatory requirements have been comprehensively reviewed in consultation with all stakeholders, it added.

DGCA conducts an assessment of the preparedness of Indian airline operators before permitting their operations to a new foreign destination.

The latest move from DGCA comes at a time when the Indian carriers are poised to expand their international footprint. The Tata Group-backed Air India placed a massive order of 470 airplanes in February including 70 wide-body aircraft and 400 narrow-body planes.

Similarly, India's largest airline IndiGo will now fly to Africa and Central Asia with 174 new weekly flights between June and September of 2023.

The airline will also launch connectivity to North America via codeshare partnership with Turkish Airlines. It currently offers connectivity to 33 destinations in Europe via Istanbul under the codeshare partnership.

The government has also set in motion a plan to transform Indian airports into aviation hubs—beginning with the Delhi airport—to ensure seamless connectivity and minimize connection time between flights, Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told Mint in April.

While the wide-body segment in India currently has around 13% share in the operational fleet of major airlines, the government has been pushing Indian carriers to order larger planes which can offer non-stop connectivity to faraway destinations, Mint reported earlier.

Updated: 12 Jun 2023, 07:15 PM IST

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