Exclusive! India Ponders Allowing Per-seat Scheduled Air Charter
AINALERTS » OCTOBER 18, 2012 by NEELAM MATHEWS October 18, 2012, 3:25 PM The Indian government looks set to reform complex rules that have made it hard for charter operators to expand services. The country’s Business Aviation Operators Association ( BAOA ) is in talks with the Ministry of Civil Aviation to permit nonscheduled operators to enter into codeshares with scheduled airlines to provide feeder services to remote destinations with short and unpaved runways. “Discussions are also on for [merging] the scheduled operator permit with the nonscheduled operator’s permit [ NSOP ] under a common air operator permit, as is the global norm,” BAOA president Rohit Kapur told AIN . As things stand NSOP operators cannot legally publish or advertise flight departures or sell tickets to individual passengers. In practice they have to quietly take bookings from passengers and then coordinate the departur...