Avoid aviation blunder
The Prime Minister’s Office has done well to ask for a re-look at the Jet Airways-Etihad deal which threatens to blow up into another 2G or Coalgate scam. Aviation minister Ajit Singh has tried to dismiss the huge outcry against the deal as airline rivalry and fear of competition.
He justifies it for the foreign direct investment that is expected. However, the collateral damage to the country’s civil aviation industry will be colossal. Every country protects its domestic aviation industry and their interests are never sold for a few pieces of silver. The government has done just that because even as the Jet-Etihad deal was being announced the government on its own came up with a massive sweetener in the form of hiking weekly bilateral rights for the two carriers from the current 13,300 seats to nearly 50,000 by providing an additional 36,670 seats per week. Jet-Etihad, where the latter will have management control, would be providing direct flights from Tier 2 cities like Pune and Amritsar directly to Abu Dhabi, which will become a hub in the Emirates at the cost of Mumbai, Delhi and other cities. If this deal goes through, it would be the second blunder, intentional or otherwise, the first being when Emirates was favoured with a hike in the number of services from/to India from 24 to 196 under Mr Singh’s predecessor.
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