Sixth freedom carriage. Enhancements in bilateral entitlements between India and foreign countries had resulted in seat capacity allowed in the bilateral agreements significantly exceeding the “point-to-point” passenger traffic requirements between the two destinations. The details of passenger traffic to/from India carried by leading International airlines during April 2014 to March 2016 segregated between “point-to-point” traffic and 6th freedom traffic, as per information furnished by AIL, is at Annexure 5. Xxxxx observed that sixth freedom traffic exceeded more than half of their actual passenger carriage for these two years in respect of the airlines indicated in the table below: Table 6.2: 6th freedom traffic to/from India carried by leading International airlines (in percentage) Sl. No. Name of Airline 2009-10 (as at Para 5.1.8 of Report No.18 of 2011-12 of CAG of India) 2014-15 2015-16 1 Qatar Airways 78.00 82.60 79.37 2 Gulf Air 79.00 80.45 81.03 3 Etihad 74.00 69.25 71.03 4 Emirates 59.00 61.96 66.60 5 British Airways 61.00 61.95 55.70 6 Air Arabia NA 57.59 60.96 7 Singapore Airlines 49.00 53.37 58.31 8 Fly Dubai NA 68.75 70.86 9 Turkish Airlines NA 73.91 73.24 10 Cathay pacific 76.00 59.88 61.26 11 Malaysian Airlines 42.00 62.98 58.69 12 Air France 73.00 60.00 61.21 13 Austrian Airlines 86.00 75.00 66.97 14 Finnair NA 75.34 61.70 15 KLM 76.00 78.16 73.48 16 Lufthansa 87.00 77.95 76.89 17 Swiss International Air Lines 63.00 65.53 65.22 Further analysis of the data indicated the following: The sixth freedom traffic carried by the above airlines continued to significantly exceed the point-to-point traffic between the countries during the years 2014-15 and 2015-16. During 2014-15, 6th freedom traffic constituted 59.15 percent of the total carriage. This increased to
