The Hindu Business Line : The plane to Pakistan

THE re-launch of air services between India and Pakistan from January 1 not only opens a direct air corridor between the two countries, but also makes easy air access to different corners of the globe.

According to sources, apart from providing faster access to the air traveller to cities in India and Pakistan, the re-launch of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flights would also open up another avenue for passengers wanting to travel to Beijing and some other cities around the world. "The Indian passenger will be able to travel to Pakistan and after a change of aircraft they would be able to travel to Beijing," a senior PIA official told Business Line.

Direct air links between India and Pakistan were snapped on January 1, 2002 when both closed their air space to aircraft registered in the other country. However, both countries lifted the ban in the New Year.

While PIA restarted operations to India with its scheduled flights landing in Delhi and Mumbai on January 1 and January 2 respectively, Indian Airlines is all set to resume its twice-a-week flight on the Delhi-Lahore-Delhi sector from January 9.

But it will not only be the air traveller flying between India and Pakistan who will benefit from the re-launch of direct flights and opening of air space. The opening of air space will also translate into passengers travelling by Indian Airlines and Air India spending lesser time in the air.

According to IA officials, passengers travelling from Delhi to Sharjah and Dubai will save up to one hour of flying time by flying over, not around, the Pakistani air space. Among the IA services which will benefit from the opening of Pakistan airspace include the Delhi-Amritsar-Sharjah and Jaipur-Delhi-Dubai flights. Besides, it provides an opportunity for IA to look at the option of launching regular services to Afghanistan.

In addition, passenger flying Air India to the UK, Europe and the US will save up to one hour of flying time. For AI, the closure of the Pakistani airspace had a two-fold impact. One, it increased the flying time from India to West Asia, Europe and the US, ranging from 10/15 minutes to 60 minutes. AI officials told Business Line that while the flights from Mumbai to West Asia, Europe, and the US had to take a short detour of 10-15 minutes to avoid the Pakistani airspace, the flights from Delhi were badly affected.

"Normally, an AI flight that would have operated on the Mumbai-Delhi-Gulf/Europe/US sector now had to come back up to Gujarat (from Delhi). From there the flight would turn south of Pakistan and fly over Dubai before proceeding onward. This means that the aircraft had to be in the air for an additional one hour at least," a senior AI official said.

The natural consequence of this was that the `wastage' on the aircraft increased and therefore its maintenance requirements went up.

Besides, there was also the financial aspect of the changed route and the resultant increase in flying time. Official sources said that the fuel bill of the AI ballooned by about Rs 70 lakh a week or between Rs 35-40 crore annually due to the closure. However, with the reopening of air space, not only the passengers but also the airline is likely to benefit.

Similarly, PIA also stands to benefit from the reopening of the Indian air space. PIA officials in Delhi indicated that the airline would restart flights to several destinations around the world including some cities in the Far-East. The airline had to suspend these flights as they were proving to be commercially unviable due to the circuitous route the aircraft had to take to avoid Indian air space which was closed to aircraft registered in Pakistan.

But a question mark still hangs on the success of the re-launched direct air services between India and Pakistan especially as direct train and bus services have also started operating between the two countries.

Industry watchers feel that the success or otherwise of the opening of direct transport links between India and Pakistan will depend on how many visas are issued on a daily basis by both the governments.

But despite these nagging doubts, the launch of direct air links is slowly but steadily catching the imagination of the market on both sides of the international border. While the first PIA flight in two years on the Lahore-Delhi-Lahore flight carried only 40 passengers into Delhi, bookings are gathering momentum for the January 9 Indian Airlines.

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