- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
GERMAN airliner Lufthansa’s chief executive officer Carsten Spohr on Sunday (3) said in Boston, the US, that restricting air traffic between India and Germany is hurting both the economies and the German carrier is eagerly looking forward to New Delhi allowing more flights between the two nations.
Indian aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) currently allows Lufthansa to operate just 10 weekly flights between India and Germany after it accused the European carrier in September last year of benefiting from “inequitable distribution” of traffic.
At a media briefing on the inaugural day of the 77th annual general meeting of International Air Transport Association (IATA), Spohr said, “The first thing we need is more traffic right now (between India and Germany), to the ‘open skies’ we had before, because I think, right now, we are blocking business between the economies of India and Germany by not allowing enough travellers to go back and forth.”
“So, that is hurting both economies because both economies are dependent on imports and exports,” he said.
He also said that the governments of Germany and Switzerland are in constant dialogue with their Indian counterpart to have “additional flights”.
The IATA has around 290 airlines as its members making up 82 per cent of the global air traffic.
The CEO also said that there are no international flights in operation now between India and Switzerland and hoped that resumption of services between them would not be far off.
The Lufthansa Group operates various European airline brands, including SWISS, Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines.
Scheduled international passenger flights have been suspended in India since March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Special flights are allowed under “air bubble” agreements that India has made with around 28 countries, including Germany.
When asked about his opinion about Vistara’s probable merger with Air India, Spohr replied: “That is something that we are looking with large interest. Obviously, Vistara is partly owned by Singapore Airlines, which is a strong partner of Lufthansa. Air India is a part of Star Alliance, so here are two friends (Air India and Vistara) getting together.”
The Lufthansa CEO also said that he has plans to visit India in early 2022 to talk to Indian carriers to see what additional business can be jointly generated on the “important market” between India and Europe.
