India gets flight access to Medina

India and Saudi Arabia have decided to enhance existing traffic entitlement of 8,500 seats per week to 20,000 seats per week with immediate effect and add new points ranging from Medina to Lucknow, Kozhikode and Hyderabad.

As per the reviewed bilateral air service agreement, Kozhikode, Lucknow and Bangalore will be added as the new points of call for Saudi Arabia besides Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kochi and Hyderabad. For Indian carriers, Medina was added as a new point besides the existing Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. While India is the first country to get permission to operate to Medina on schedule basis, Saudi Arabia is the first Gulf country to get flight operation facility to Kozhikode.

At the meeting in Jeddah, the two countries have also decided to do away with all limitations on cargo services, announcing that there will be no restrictions in terms of frequency and point of call for operating cargo services. The revised bilateral agreement will help add a host of new services and also bring down tariffs along the busy India-Saudi Arabia sector which had become rather restricted owing to current bilateral capacity. The two countries had last reviewed the bilateral air service agreement in 2002.