Trade of Available Seat Kilometer (ASKM) permitted by Aviation Ministry
Posted on: 09/May/2018 11:17:52 AM
The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) called for a meeting with Airlines of India to allow the sale and purchase of seats in the form of Available Seat Kilometer (ASKM). Now the Central Aviation Ministry is in the plans to permit this kind of trade to resolve the route dispersal guideline requirements.
The Sources from the Ministry said the official discussions regarding the reconsideration of the ASKM trades are in full swing and both the parties will come to a mutually benefitting decision as soon as possible.
ASKM is the measure of the airlines capacity in carrying passengers and it is a multiplication of number of Kilometers that the aircraft flown and the number of seats available in that particular travel.
Trading of this ASKM was allowed since 1994 and after the removal of the seat purchasing option in the new civil aviation policy the trade of such kind was completely stopped. Now the Aviation Ministry is asking the Airlines to rethink the whole concept of trading with the Seat-Flying distance factor.
Now the new decision to permit this trade was supported by certain airlines like Spice jet, Vistara and AirAsia India and some of the airlines like Air India, IndiGo and Jet Airways do not view the inclusion of the policy in favor to their concern.
Sources from the Ministry mentioned about the inadvertent omission of the ASKM trade policy and to reconsider the Airlines rigid stand on this issue. RDG guidelines clearly indicates the Airlines should have enough flights in the low density areas and the ASKM policy allowed the trade of sears from airlines that was working more number of flights in the low density routes.
