Setting a deadline for itself, Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker said the company would wait another 12 months to take a call on starting an airline in India.
“We will lose interest in time because we have a fund that we would like to invest. If we do not invest in time, we have to use that fund somewhere else,’’ Akbar told newspersons at a media interaction on the side lines of the ‘International Aviation Summit’ organised jointly by Ministry of Civil Aviation and International Air Transport Association. “It is like you have money to invest in an iPhone, but if is not available you will go to Samsung,” he said.
The airline CEO said that the restrictive policy on foreign airlines’ investment in the sector was confusing. The government allows 100 per cent FDI in a scheduled airline. But it applies only where there is no investment by a foreign airline. ‘’It does not make sense to differentiate between a foreigner and a foreign airline. Both are foreigners,” Al Baker said when asked whether he wants the Indian government to allow a foreign airline to invest 100 per cent in an airline in the country to operate only in the domestic skies.
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