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Business Line : Industry & Economy / Logistics : Lufthansa awaits govt nod to fly A380 to India: "UP IN THE AIR

It has been around two years since the government of Germany first approached the Indian government asking it to allow Lufthansa to fly the A380 to India. Follow-ups including a recent meeting of the German transport minister with the Aviation Ministry has not yet had the desired results.

As things stand, the Indian government seems to be vacillating on whether to open up Indian skies to the A380. Earlier, in his interaction with journalists in Delhi, Mr Axel Hilgers, General Manager-South Asia, Lufthansa, said, “We have received neither a yes nor a no.”

Reports suggest that the government is not yet inclined to let the A380 fly into India. Industry watchers point out that this could be a result of fears that a superjumbo like the A380 could eat into the international load factors of domestic players such as Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines.

Estimates suggest that foreign airlines now ferry around 70 per cent of the air traffic from India to foreign shores. Permission to Lufthansa to operate the A380 could open the floodgates to similar requests from other international airline majors such as Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Qantas which have the A380 in their fleet."