Jet still awaits clearance for Shanghai even as India clears Chinese cargo airline's itinerary
14 Apr 2008
New Delhi: India granted security clearance to Chinese cargo airline, Great Wall, at the end of last week which will now allow the airline to fly to destinations in the southern and western parts of the country. As a reciprocal gesture the Chinese government is supposed to clear Indian private carrier Jet Airways' request to fly through Shanghai, on a route that continues to San Francisco. This permission, however, has failed to materialise.
Great Wall received required clearances from civil aviation regulatory and supervisory agencies, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
Jet Airways officials have indicated informally that they will very likely delay launch of services on the route by at least a month. They say it would be safer to have formal clearance in their hands before announcing launch of operations instead of inconveniencing passengers by withdrawing reservations in case permission fails to materialise.
Permissions to Great Wall and Jet Airways to operate on these routes were to be granted on a reciprocal basis. While Indian authorities granted clearance post-haste to Great Wall, immediately after Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh's visit to China in January this year, there was considerable embarrassment all round when the Chinese showed no hurry in granting permission to Jet to fly through Shanghai.
This, after India had raised a certain amount of concern that Great Wall would be flying over sensitive Indian nuclear establishments around the cities of Chennai and Mumbai, which house sensitive establishments at Kalpakkam and Tarapur.
