UK and India ease flight restrictions

THE UK AND INDIA HAVE signed an agreement to ease the restrictions on the number of scheduled flights between the two countries.

The deal sees the scrapping of limits on flights from key Indian cities including Chennai and Kolkata. It also sees the opening up of all UK destinations for Indian carriers to launch codeshare flights and, reciprocally, UK carriers can now operate codeshare services to any international airport in India, through domestic codeshare arrangements.

There are currently 88 scheduled services per week in each direction between the two countries, carrying about 2.5 million passengers per year. In 2015 there were 422,000 visits from India to the UK, contributing £433 million to the economy.