New Delhi: The Adani Airports Holdings Ltd, which operates eight airports across India, has urged the Union government to expand international flying rights under bilateral agreements with countries including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, according to a report by Economic Times.This, however, is contrary to what two of India’s biggest airlines – Air India and IndiGo – have recommended, as per the report. Opening India’s skies to overseas airlines could expose it to ‘unfair competition’ from cash-rich carriers in West Asia, Air India has held.The ET report quoted documents that it had accessed as saying that the Adani Group had told the government last month that allowing more capacity would allow the city of Mumbai in Maharashtra – considered India’s financial capital – to become a global aviation hub. The Adani Group plans to spend $11.1 billion on terminals, runways and aircraft handling facilities and passenger amenities by 2030, Jeet Adani, director of Adani Airport Holdings recently said, as per the report.“Increasing access and options for passengers is a crucial aspect of transforming Indian airports into global hubs, and that should not just depend on when Indian airlines are ready to compete,” the report quoted an unnamed official of the Adani Group as saying. Not opening up international flying rights would be a “criminal waste of assets” being built by airports, the official allegedly said. According to ET, the official also said that it would be tantamount to “penalising” Indian customers, who would have to pay higher prices due to lack of flights.India’s National Civil Aviation Policy of 2016 says that unless the utilisation from the Indian side reaches 80%, additional flying rights would not be granted to overseas carriers. As a result, overseas airlines have not been able to deploy additional flights despite an exponential growth in traffic, leading to a spike in air ticket prices, the report said.India’s “reluctance” to issue more international flying rights “is due to the likely threat of passenger migration to cash-rich Gulf airlines,” which have far higher aircraft inventories and can fly travellers to Europe and North America via their home bases in Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Doha, it added.The report also quoted Air India CEO Campbell Wilson as saying that in the case of many overseas carriers, more than 70% of traffic they are carrying from India was transiting and going somewhere else. Hence it was in “India’s interests to make sure the pace of liberalisation is such that it doesn’t undercut investments being made by Indian entities,” he had allegedly said. The report underlined that India’s reluctance to grant flying rights to overseas carriers, is detrimental for private airport operators like the Adani Group, because they have lesser returns for their high investments in building new terminals and runways in the airports they operate — because there are no ‘aggressive’ expansion plans for Indian carriers like Air India or IndiGo.