NEW DELHI: In a rare move, India has enhanced the flying rights of a Gulf nation when it raised weekly seats to 18,000 per week between India and Kuwait from earlier 12,000 — a raise of 50%. Now airlines of both sides can deploy 18,000 seats per week. The agreement was signed by India’s aviation secretary Samir Kumar Sinha and Kuwait DGCA president Sheikh Hamoud Al-Mubarak. Kuwait gets more bilaterals after 18 years, when its capacity was raised from 8,320 to 12,000.The enhancement comes as airlines of both countries had long ago fully utilised their share of allowed allowed seats. Air India Express, Akasa, IndiGo, Jazeera Airways and Kuwait Airways operate nearly 40 flights daily between the two countries. At 54 weekly flights, Kuwait Airways is is the biggest operator followed by IndiGo at 36.With an increase in demand for travel, Kuwait — like several other regions especially in the Middle East including Dubai — had been seeking a hike in bilaterals. In the last one year, India has signed new air service agreements with Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Uzbekistan.The Modi govt since 2014 had been following a policy for bilaterals that keeps in mind the interest of Indian carriers and has been taking steps to increase their share in the international traffic flying in and out of the country. The steps taken include massive capex in augmenting Indian airports’ capacity so that they can become big global hubs; divesting Air India and AI Express; letting new airlines like Akasa take wings and enabling IndiGo to grow despite massive global supply chain constraints.
