venk

AA codeshare with BA metal is allowed by US bubble rules regardless of transit points (one of those things that shows how stupid this whole bubble system being unrelated to Covid or capacity requirements).

So, we are a week away from the ban ending and these Babus don’t seem to be in any hurry to tell people whether they can buy tickets to places they cannot fly with bubble rules in early march or if their booked flights will be canceled by airlines whose full schedules may need to be cut back with ban being extended into March. Doubt if any of these babus in civial aviation actually do air travel that they control.

A sensible thing would have been to get rid of bubble rules back in Dec while they slowly loosened capacity limits. But Home ministry might not like someone else tearing down their handiwork.

galaticos

MoCA has no control on relaxation of bubble rules without MHA and MoHFW approvals.. I'm pretty sure the airlines have been given a heads up by now informally..

venk

From what I understand, they need approval from MoHFW for capacity controls (to resume full schedules or not) and definition of risk countries. This is unrelated to bubble rules which happen to be the default restrictions in place on who can travel which metal within those capacity controls. The latter seems to be from MHA acting like the mafiosi with countries for political diplomatic/political reasons.

As for them pre-notifying airlines, I am not so sure what is going on. BA, for example, has been reducing its BLR-LHR flights from daily to 4 days a week a month at a time as the new ban extensions came out since Dec. They did that only after the DGCA memo tweets came out. However, I just noticed that they have recently reduced the schedules from daily to partial for April with full schedule now only in May. They have also zeroed out the discount fare classes. This doesn’t bode well for resuming full flight schedules in mid March.

Adding: They have also updated the bubble rules countries adding Kyrgyzstan to the list 3 days ago. Not exactly acting like these are going away soon!

xobile

I suspect the bubble rules would go away at the earliest on March 29, which would nicely coincide with the start of the summer season. I know a few of my EY flights for April were canceled a few weeks ago though due to the uncertainty I suppose.

Keyser

In the past the ban has been extended by a month, a day or so before they are coming to an end. I don't expect that to change this month as well. They will probably extend the ban by another month on the 27th or 28th of February.

My sources at the Civil Aviation Ministry have told me that at some point in March they will announce regular resumption of flights that will come into effect by mid March or beginning April.

smangalam

Is registration for TN e-pass still required to fly into Chennai from international destination?

superboi

I think that was the plan and it was announced also but then Omicron happened...

TravellingMan

I did not fill it for the last few trips as no one is asking for it. You can always fill it to have your documentation complete.

smangalam

Thanks!

oliver2002

Until further notice????

Keyser

Which basically means they need a few days to figure stuff out before returning to some semblance of normalcy from around the 15th of March.

They could have gotten their act together earlier & made the announcement today but competency is not very high on their list so they waited till the last day to start working on implementing a policy to resume regular international travel.

venk

Looks like Aviation ministry did send a policy proposal to MoHFW but they either didn’t get the approval from them or the MHA Bubble Babus (who are still adding more bubble arrangements the latest being Thailand a few days ago) are coming in the way of finalizing it. Since DGCA doesn’t have a clue now as to when this would be permitted and have no control, you have the indefinite statement which is better than the month at a time extension.

But the problem is airlines now have a reason to cancel and refund your tickets bought for any time in the future if against bubble rules regardless of when you bought it if they believe they were too cheap for the peak season.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...w/89731658.cms

What a mess.

Keyser

My sources say that the proposal was sent a few weeks ago & they received approval a few days back. However, no plan has been put in place for regular resumption of flights so now they are busy coming up with what needs to be done. There is a good chance that we get an announcement within this week.

venk

Interesting. I do agree that this memo with indefinite period suggests they needed a few days more. What plan do they really need to resume flights though? They already had a dress rehearsal in Dec.

Keyser

No clue. Hopefully we wont have to wait long for them to get their act together.