BANGALORE: This must be the swiftest ever regulatory nod by Uncle Sam. Within days of civil aviation minister Praful Patel hitting out at the US for holding up Jet Airways’ application to fly to the US on security grounds, the legacy carrier has got the green signal.
On Thursday, David Kennedy, information officer at the US embassy, confirmed that Jet had been given permission to fly to the US. “After a long wait, the US Department of Transport (US DoT) has granted economic authority for Jet to fly to the US. This is the first tangible benefit to a private airline coming out of the Indo-US open sky pact in 2005,” Kennedy said.
With all regulatory approvals (security and others) under its belt, Kennedy said, Jet now had to sort out operational (flight schedule, et al) issues with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). “The airline will now have to complete operational discussion with the FAA,” Kennedy added.
It is a major victory of sorts for Jet, whose plans of operating flights to the lucrative US market were stuck for over one and a half years after an US namesake - Jet Airways Inc - objected to its application alleging that it had links with Al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist outfits.
A civil aviation ministry official said Jet had the Indian authority’s nod as early as February, 2005. But even as the matter dragged, the airline has expanded its operations on other overseas destinations like the UK, Singapore and others.
The full-service carrier’s clearance to start flights to the US comes after the recent visit of a US team (of which US DoT’s FAA was part of), which inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for extension of bilateral co-operation in civil aviation with India.
With the approval hurdle crossed, Jet, which has largest chunk (around 30%) of the domestic market, will become the first private-sector carrier to fly to the US. Currently, only the state-owned Air India operates flights to America. Another legacy airline, Air Sahara has also been cleared by the Indian government to fly to the US. However, Sahara is yet to draw up firm US plans.
With Jet having indicated publicly that it wants to be a major player in overseas aviation market, it may now try to make up for the lost time, and launch its US flights as soon as it gets the delivery of its wide-bodied aircraft. And that has been reported to be as early as next summer (around April). The US destinations that it is reportedly looking at are New York and San Francisco.
