Jet Airways, which has been wanting to launch a flight to Manila for the longest time, has recently been refused permission to fly to the airport by the Civil Aeronautics Board of Philippines, as a result of growing congestion at the airport. According to the Philippines CAB official, 9W had applied for landing slots between 07h00 and 19h00, the busiest time of the day for the airport and the possibility of using other airports in the country was ruled out as most were not night rated and are limited to day time operations.
On the other hand, Myanmar has granted India fifth freedom rights, which means that Indian airlines will now be able to operate revenue flights between India and Myanmar, and also stop at another destination to ferry passengers between those two airports. Spicejet has already expressed interest in flying from Delhi to Dhaka, and onwards to Yangon, and is awaiting regulatory approvals for the route.
The coming months should see some interesting new routes coming online which have not been served before.
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@indranil, I agree. I was in Manila earlier this year and had to fly to Chennai … but there were no non-stop flights so I had to go MNL-SIN-MAA on SQ metal instead. :/ Manila NAIA is interesting since I read recently how a Chinese businessman was refused entry to Manila due to his rude behavior to flight attendants on Philippine Airlines.
I see another possibility of adding up Vietnam and Cambodia as two tourist destinations. Myanmar in itself is a terrific news 🙂 now I can start planning the long pending trip. Regarding philippines, they recently introduce visa free travel for indians for 2 weeks. I think they could have best capitalised on tourism through the 9W introduction.
That’s great for India/Myanmar. For the longest time the only way to fly to Myanmar from India was through Air India from Kolkata/Gaya. Hopefully the competition will help make airfare prices lower.
I don’t understand why the Philippines wouldn’t grant Jet Airways rights to land in Manila when EK just added another flight recently a few months ago (and Cebu Pacific will start a MNL-DXB route soon.)
Hmmm.. just thinking about it, I know AirAsia uses the farther airport in Clark (1-2 hours from Manila). I wonder whether Jet Airways will apply to that airport.