Aviation meet seeks govt help to sector

India Aviation 2014, fourth annual edition of the airplane sector exhibition and conference co-organised by the civil aviation ministry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) began here on Wednesday. Seniors from the sector made a pitch for easier policies and concessions for regional connectivity and the maintenance, repair and overhaul business.

With the country in the midst of an election season, no major decision was expected or announced.

Unlike past editions which attracted bigwigs, airline chief executives didn't come; lowcost airlines IndiGo and GoAir did not participate. Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal, a regular at previous editions, also skipped the event. However, his senior executives participated and so did the management at SpiceJet and Air India (AI).

"There is nothing big to achieve for the carriers by coming to a B2B (business to business) show like this. I don't find anything odd in some airlines not coming to attend the event today. To my mind, this is more of a hardware show than a travel show," said Sidharth Birla, president of Ficci.

The show is being held in the backdrop of a Malaysian airline plane crash but the mysterious disappareance of the Boeing 777 and its ramifications did not dominate the show. All that civil aviation secretary Ashok Lavassa told journalists was that all safety and security procedures mandated by the Internatational Civil Aviation Organisation were being followed and regularly reviewed here.

Regarding the downgrade of India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation by the US Federal Aviation Administration, Lavassa did not give a time frame by when the ranking would get revised. He said the government would do a review once the hiring of fulltime flight inspectors was complete.

While the downgrade has impacted AI and Jet, being unable to start additional flights to the US, Indo-Merican trade ties have not been affected, even in aviation. This was evident with the participation of Lecodia Zak, director of the US Trade and Development Agency, a US government body.

An industry representative who participated in a meeting of business heads and government officials, said the government must take steps to make India an attractive investment decision, with single-window clearances and tax concessions. Participants also said thousands of jobs were being lost as Indian airlines were taking their planes abroad for repair and overhaul.