Parliamentary panel urges govt to incentivise airlines to reduce dependence on Gulf transit

With the war in West Asia impacting air traffic, a Parliamentary panel has urged the government to incentivise Indian airlines to launch and expand wide-body services from emerging and secondary hubs like Bengaluru and Chennai to Europe and North America within a year and “progressively reduce” dependence on Gulf transit.

At present, it said, roughly half of India’s international passenger traffic transits through Gulf hubs and the airspace closure in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Israel that started on February 28 effectively shut down the primary air corridor linking Asia, Europe and Africa, forcing airlines to reroute westbound flights via the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean airspace.

This added 2-4 hours of flight time and substantially increased fuel consumption, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture headed by JD(U) MP Sanjay Jha said in its report tabled in Parliament late March.

It urged the government to develop a comprehensive inter-ministerial Aviation Resilience and Diversification Framework (ARDF) in coordination with the Ministries of Petroleum and Natural Gas, External Affairs, Home Affairs, the Airports Authority of India, and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to tackle eventualities in such a scenario.

The frameworks should “incentivise” Indian carriers to launch and expand direct wide-body services from emerging and secondary hubs like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune to Europe and North America within 12 months, “progressively reducing dependence on Gulf transit”, the report said.

Scrutinising the Demands for Grants (2026-27) for the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the report recalled that Turkish Airlines continued operations via Istanbul and European carriers Air France, Lufthansa and British Airways maintained US–India connectivity by avoiding Gulf airspace entirely, "demonstrating the viability of non-Gulf routing".

It also said overflight and traffic-right arrangements with non-Gulf nodes -- Istanbul, Athens, Frankfurt in Europe; Nairobi in Africa; and Singapore in South-East Asia -- to provide contingency connectivity when Gulf hubs are compromised should be concluded.

The government has already identified ‘safe airports’ including Muscat, Fujairah, Ras al Khaimah, Jeddah, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi for consolidation and evacuation, a model that should be institutionalised, it said.

It also suggested that every scheduled international operator file three alternate routings -- northern corridor via Central Asia, southern corridor via the Indian Ocean, and Pacific-side corridor via South-East Asia -- with associated fuel-stop plans.

It also wanted the Ministry of Civil Aviation to coordinate with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas to ensure contingency ATF supply arrangements at alternate refuelling points and institute a crisis-period ATF pricing stabilisation mechanism.

There is a need to monitor the cascading effect on domestic flight frequency arising from fleet and crew redeployment on longer international routings, and engage with the Ministry of Finance to explore temporary tax relief on ATF during periods of sustained geopolitical disruption, it added.