THIS is apropos the news item ‘Gulf-specific’ aviation policy questioned” (May 19). This government should not make the same mistake as it did back in the 1990s in the name of ‘open sky’.

The travel industry should not be ignored. We have examples of how countries protect their market for their national airlines. When Emirates requested for more flights to Paris they replied you can bring as many flights as you can but we will not give you sixth freedom, which means Emirates can take passengers to Dubai but not to third country, which resulted in Emirates not increasing its flights to Paris.

We should also use sixth freedom to restrict or limit capacity of airlines, which are bringing six flights every day to one city besides flights to other cities and have captured more than 50pc of the travel industry and dictating their terms of marketing and creating monopolies in all spheres of our travel industry.

Riaz A. Khan

Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2015

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