New India Routes

[FOZ]

"CAA Announces Decision On India Routes 03 December 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Following the hearing held on 11 and 12 November to decide how to allocate the 21 frequencies newly available for UK airlines to serve various points in India, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has announced that it considers its statutory duties in this case are best served by awarding:




seven services to British Airways, four of which are to be operated on the Chennai (Madras) route and three to Bangalore;

four services to British Midland Airways to be operated on the Mumbai (Bombay) route; and

ten services to Virgin Atlantic, seven of which are to be used on the Delhi route and three on Mumbai.



The frequencies, which become available in three tranches from Winter 2004, were secured under the latest bilateral air services agreement between the Governments of the UK and India, signed in September. British Airways currently operate all 19 services per week available to UK airlines under the terms of the previous agreement between the two countries. Following this decision, the distribution of rights will be as follows:

Airline Current distribution of rights Newly allocated rights Allocation after decision
BA 19 7 26
BM 0 4 4
Virgin 0* 10 10
*Until 30 November 2004 Virgin operated three services to Delhi under a commercial arrangement with Air India

The CAA has decided to award the rights in this order:

For Winter 2004:
Seven rights to operate to Delhi awarded to Virgin.

The proposal that Virgin put forward suggested that Virgin could operate up to seven services per week between London and Mumbai and Delhi during the Winter 2004 season. The CAA is therefore of the view that early utilisation of all the Delhi rights by Virgin would be both feasible and desirable.

For Summer 2005:
Four rights to operate to Mumbai awarded to BM
Three rights to operate to Mumbai awarded to Virgin

The CAA expects BM to operate from the beginning of the season, as they had proposed for their daily service, and for Virgin to do the same.

For Winter 2005:
Four rights to operate to Chennai awarded to BA
Three rights to operate to Bangalore awarded to BA

The CAA expects that these services will be operated from the beginning of the 2005 Winter season.

The full document is available on the CAA Website. "


So, they've decided. Will everyone be happy? I doubt it!

[brabazon]

So it's 10 (VS); 7 (BA) and 4 (BD). I wonder what the split would have been if VS and BD merged to form one airline.

Has anyone appealed yet or will BD decide not to go for it at all?

[ATNotts]

Have I missed something, or was this CAA decision based solely on UK carrier's rights to operate extra services from London?

I appreciate the economic problems for a British carrier serving an airport at which it does not already have a long-haul operating base, but surely, given the number of seats presently on offer by Slovak, Turkmen and Uzbek carriers from Birmingham, at least one of the carriers might have had just a little imagination and at least offered services from Manchester as part of this deal, rather than follow the totally predictable "Britian is London, and London is Britain" template?

And what about Amritsar? Was this airport excluded from the deal?

[Daza]

Air India have applied for slots at bhx next summer
Daza

[ATNotts]

Daza,

Very interesting - I seam to recall reading on another thread that they had also applied at MAN.

They may be playing the slots game - but hopefully not. There must be room for a higher quality service from BHX to India, given the number of stopping services there are per week, via THR, ASB and TAS.

[GOLF-INDIA BRAVO]

I think an announcement on Monday re 3 x weekly Manchester flight by B777 with Air India

G-I-B