On the one hand, minister Ajit Singh says his ministry is open to giving the proposed airline firm a national air operator’s permit to fly across the country; on the other, senior ministry officials say they would prefer the company be given a regional permit before being allowed to fly national later.
Singh told Business Standard: “The AirAsia-Tata alliance has not yet applied, but we have no problem in giving it all-India permit.
"As for demand-supply mismatch on trunk routes and growth in traffic, why should we worry? The airlines should be worried. "The market forces will take care of that.
"Competition always benefits consumers.”
A senior ministry official, however, said: “We have concerns over the firm being issued a national permit in the beginning.
"The ministry is about to bring new route dispersal guidelines for regional connectivity. If all start deploying planes on metro routes, there would be a demand-capacity mismatch.”
The bureaucracy, of course, has the option of taking up the divergence in its views with the minister’s
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