Fly Dubai, the low-cost airline floated by the Ai-Maktoum royal family of Dubai recently, has started refunding passengers after being forced to defer its India plans with government clearances not coming through. The cold shoulder from civil aviation authorities comes amidst concerns that Fly Dubai’s fares could hit the Middle East operations of Air India Express, the budget airline of the bleeding national carrier.
The airline had sought permission for flights to Chandigarh, Coimbatore Luck now form mid-July onwards.FlyDubai was offering fares as low as Rs 4,700 including taxes, on Dubai-Luckow sector. Other destinations including Goa were likely to be added subsequently. Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed AI Maktoum,a member of the Dubai royal family and chairman of Emirates Airlines, founded Fly-Dubai which started operations this June. The low-cost carrier connects Dubai to destinations like Beirut, Amman, Alexandria and Damascus.FlyDubai is not part of Emirates even though it received financial help from the latter. A senior government official said none of the initial destinations sought by Fly Dubai figured in the existing ‘points of call’ in the moue signed between India and UAE last year.He,however said the three cities were part of the ‘note verbale’exchanged by the two countries.
“The three cities – Chandigarh,Coimbatore and Luck now- were part of note verbally’ exchange and had to be agreed later as additional points of call.Also,these new points of call agreed were to have seat entitlements within the overall existing entitlements ,” he said.
Simply put, FlyDubai’s connections to these proposed points of call have to be part of the existing seat entitlements for UAE carriers, and not additional capacities created.UAE carriers – like Emirates, Etihad and Air Arabia – have 54,200 seat entitlements weekly to ten Indian destinations currently.
The civil aviation ministry is going very slow on further negotiation of seat entitlements with foreign countries as it has come under fire for allegedly compromising Air India’s interest while signing bilateral air service agreements.
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