India's civil aviation ministry joint secretary, Arun Kumar, is hoping that World Routes 2016 can be the catalyst to unlock more open skies agreements with countries across Europe. Speaking on the third day of the conference in Chengdu, China, he revealed that following an open skies agreement with Greece, India saw the event as the ideal platform to create more.
"That's exactly why we are here," he said. "We have developed a new aviation policy and proclaimed to the world that skies are open from India."
"With the US we already have an open sky agreement, and with the UK we have a partial open sky agreement. There are also other European countries we have offered open sky agreements to and, God willing, we can sign a deal that allows these countries to fly as frequently as they want."
"We want more connectivity so our airports and airlines are here interacting with their counterparts from around the world. We are currently discussing many deals and hopefully in the future we will attract more airlines to fly to India."
"All our big gateway airports are here; Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. They are interacting one to one with the airlines. They are offering discounts and various other incentives if they fly to India, but they are also doing analysis of the market."
Although the event took place in Asia, Kumar explained that India is already well-served from this market and is casting its eyes further afield.
"We already have a lot of traffic from Asia, particularly from the Middle East and South East Asia. It supports the passengers because it is close and prices are low," he said. "Now what we are focusing on is Europe and the more distant market."
Discussing the country's offering to airlines and travellers, Kumar said he believed "the future is great for tourism in India. It's a very big country with lots of tourist destinations. It has mountains, sea, it has everything. We have a lot of religious and historical places such as the Taj Mahal – all we want is more and more tourists."
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