Like I’d written on this blog about 14 months back, India had received a downgrade of its safety assessment rating from the American civil aviation authority FAA, which conducts an inspection on the regulators of all the countries who operate flights to the USA. The downgrade was done on the premise that India’s regulator did not have the expertise to supervise India’s airlines, and needed to beef up their know how to be able to get back to Category 1. The impact of this downgrade, a privilege that only few other countries had, was that India’s airlines could not launch new flights to the USA, and the ones which they already had, would face additional scrutiny. Also, no American airlines…
regulations
Tag Archives for regulations.
A new Indian Aviation regulator and a new fee for you
Last week was full of news articles about how a new Aviation regulator is coming up for India. The currently existing Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGCA) will soon be replaced with a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which will be an autonomous regulator for Indian civil aviation, unlike DGCA which is under the Ministry of Civil Aviation in India. Business Standard published a very good news report on the proposed structure of the new aviation regulator, and how it needs to be self sufficient. Unlike the DGCA, CAA will need to earn its own bread and butter. Here is how it proposes to do that: CAA will primarily get revenues from three sources: First, the Airports Authority of India will…
India, welcome to unbundled fares!
The Indian Civil Aviation market is up for a change, since after years of disallowing unbundling of fares, the aviation regulator & minister have finally come around to allow this move, in line with global practices. As per the new regulations, notified earlier this evening, the aviation regulator has allowed the following services to be charged for separately: Preferential seating Meal/snack/drink charges (except drinking water) Charge for using Airlines’ lounges Check in baggage charges Sports equipment carriage Musical instrument carriage Fee for special declaration of valuable baggage The regulator expects that base prices of tickets will go down when various services will be unbundled, however, I do not expect this to be the case because airlines in India would rather…
