Security fears due to deteriorating India-Pakistan ties as well as economic factors are driving the requests.Air India, Jet Airways, IndiGo and SpiceJet operate flights to Gulf over Pakistan. "In the past few days, India has asked some non-scheduled aircraft flying from Pakistan to return and Pakistan may also retaliate. "With this not only airlines save fuel and route navigation flight charges (RNFC), our country can generate more RNFC. This will also enable reduction in carbon emissions which is part of global environmental saving," SpiceJet said in the presentation. An aviation ministry source said: "We are getting lot of requests from airlines for direct point-to-point routes and are focusing on flexi use of airspace for that.

Source: Times of India August 22, 2016 22:41 UTC