India signs open skies pact with Greece

The agreement will allow airlines from India to operate unlimited number of flights to Greece

India on Wednesday signed an open skies agreement with Greece, the first after the finalisation of the civil aviation policy in June.

At present, there are no direct flights between India and Greece and passengers travel one stop via Gulf states or Turkey to Greece. In fact, there was no air services agreement between India and Greece till now thus preventing the start of air services between two countries.

The open skies agreement will allow airlines from India to operate unlimited number of flights to Greece while Greek carriers have been granted unlimited traffic rights to six Indian metro cities.

"Greece has become the first country to have an open sky agreement with India under the new policy," said civil aviation secretary R N Choubey.

Prior to this, India had entered into an open skies agreement with the US and Britain. The open skies with Britain covers airports excluding London Heathrow.

According to the civil aviation policy, the government can enter into an 'open sky' air services agreement on a reciprocal basis with SAARC nations as well as countries with territory located entirely beyond a 5,000 kilometre radius from New Delhi.

Open sky beyond 5,000-km, even without any restrictions, will have very limited or no impact as there is very low demand for additional bilaterals on these routes, Kapil Kaul, chief executive officer, South Asia, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation had said last year.

Kaul added that European carriers had unused bilaterals and there was scope for limited growth on these routes." Further, carriers in Latin America, Africa and Australia were unlikely to show interest, he had said