upnorth

I think there is big scope for huge increase in flights to India. For decades journey to/from India was based on bilateral flying rights. Since Air-India never went full, once the foreign airlines were full people had not choice but to fly Air-India. That worked fine until after 1991 when the Indian economy opened up and India was loosing business because IT workers could not fly out. Then came liberalization, which is still no where on the lines of the UK-US deregulated sector. Consequently load factors from/to India are high. Thus most airlines can charge higher amounts thus adding to the cost of doing business in India. Opening up the sector will provide more choices and improve competition and bring down cost of travel leading to increased tourism. In the past, I have cancelled my trips to India and chosen to vacation in other parts of the world due to being wait-listed in the India sector. That is Australia - Singapore no problem, but not Singapore - India. Similarly US-Europe no problem, but wait listed for economy fare from Europe to India or more commonly outward bound from India.

It would be great to see more private airlines from India flying international. It will bring much needed competition to this sector which for years has been the cash cow for foreign airlines. Qantas is having a similar monopoly on the US sector, where it has for years prevented SIA picking up Australian passengers onwards to US west coast.