The Union Government has announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Republic of Korea in an effort to enhance the two countries’ existing air service cooperation.
The new agreement will see Korean carriers getting access to more airports, additional capacity entitlements for both countries, and the ability to use each other as stop-overs to fly further like to the U.S.
“With the signing of the above MoU, the air connectivity between the two countries will be enhanced further and this is expected to boost economic and people-to-people cooperation,” the Indian government said in a release on Friday.
Key among the features in the MoU are the two additional points of call — Chennai and Bengaluru — to South Korean carriers. In addition, the two countries will be able to avail more services from each other. “The capacity entitlement for both the countries has been increased from existing six services per week to 19 services per week,” the release said.
Indian carriers have also been granted additional ‘beyond points’. This means that they can also now fly via South Korea to Seattle and Vancouver and not just Tokyo and Los Angeles as before. This can make flying to Seattle and Vancouver more economical.
“Ho-Chi-Minh city is now available as an intermediate point to the carriers of both countries in addition to Bangkok, Macau or Hong Kong. This gives an opportunity to the Indian carriers to provide additional options to the people travelling to Vietnam,” the release added.
This MoU follows two failed attempts at reaching an agreement, the first on December 21, 2012 in Delhi and the second on October 20-21, 2014 in Seoul.
This year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited South Korea on May 18-19 where South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Mr. Modi both welcomed the ongoing efforts towards aviation cooperation.
Air traffic between India and Korea is not quite robust at the moment. In the April-June 2015 quarter, only 14,260 passengers flew from Korea to India, making up only 0.24 per cent of the total international traffic entering India in that period.
Similarly, passengers travelling from India to Korea made up only 0.3 per cent of the total passengers who left India in April-June 2015.
