Flydubai CEO says demand exists to quadruple India flights

May 16, 2025, 1:16 PM

Passengers boarding a Flydubai flight in Dubai. The airline operates 30 flights a week from Dubai to eight Indian cities

Bilateral agreement limits flights
India protects local carriers
Possible trade deal expansion

Flydubai believes it has the capacity to quadruple its flights to India, saying the demand is there.

However, Delhi’s protectionist aviation policies remain a stumbling block to the Gulf’s biggest low-cost carrier by fleet size, as well as other UAE airlines.

Flydubai currently operates 30 flights a week from Dubai to eight Indian cities.

“India represents huge potential for us,” Flydubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith told AGBI in a recent interview in Dubai. “I can definitely treble this, even increase it four times.”

The hurdle preventing more flights for Flydubai and sister airline Emirates is a 2014 air service agreement (ASA) between the UAE and India, which controls how many flights can take place between the two countries and to which cities.

Between Dubai and 15 Indian cities there are no more than 66,000 seats allowed per week. Between Abu Dhabi and India that number drops to 50,000 seats.

India has added 200 million people in the 11 years since overtaking China as the most populous country in the world, but the ASA has not grown to reflect this.

Emirates, meanwhile, operates 167 flights per week to nine points in India but its frustration is clear.

“We have been building [capacity] since 2015,” Emirates president Sir Tim Clark told Aviation Week at ITB Berlin earlier this year.

“For 10 years, we could not increase capacity to India. India therefore [became] less important to us. It’s a loss to India [that] Emirates is not able to expand operations there.”

According to aviation consultancy Capa India, India is likely to become the world’s third-largest aviation market by 2030. Indian airlines are also expected to double their fleet to more than 1,400 aircraft over the next decade.

But the bilateral air service agreements currently in place mean that international airlines, like Emirates, Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways and Flydubai, are not able to tap into this growth.

“The current ASA regime is a drag on growth and connectivity,” said Linus Bauer, managing director of BAA & Partners.

“But unlocking it will require a carefully negotiated roadmap, balancing protectionist instincts with the imperative to integrate India more fully into global aviation flows.”

India has so far resisted calls to increase the seats per week cap, citing the need to protect its domestic carriers as they scale up international operations.

“For all the carriers, India-US is the most important [route] in their network,” said John Grant, a partner at aviation consultancy Midas Aviation and an AGBI columnist.

The total market from India to the US was just short of 630,000 passengers last year, said Grant, of whom just over 14 percent travelled directly and the rest via other points. Almost 100,000 connected through Dubai and nearly 60,000 through Abu Dhabi.

A report by the Observer Research Foundation and the UAE Embassy in India suggested that even a 1 percent rise in passenger volume from India to the UAE could see a 0.2 percent drop in average airfares because of improved economies of scale.

In January Dr Sahitya Chaturvedi, secretary general of the Indian Business and Professional Council, told AGBI that the UAE and India plan to extend their 10-year trade deal to eight new sectors to expand their annual bilateral trade beyond $100 billion.

“We work hard to position ourselves to get more, but it’s a decision above my grade,” said Al Ghaith. “This is for the governments to decide.”