Soon after bouncing back from its first quarter loss and posting a net profit of 849 million Singapore dollars, the Singapore Airlines has indicated its intention to expand into India and is keenly awaiting the new government's civil aviation policy, including divestment of the airline PSUs.

"The situation in India so far has been the mirror opposite of that in Australia, where the government has liberated the aviation sector and allowed foreign ownership (of local airlines)...foreign airlines can't acquire stake in the Indian carriers. We have to see what the new government says about policy statements on airline ownership and other issues," SIA CEO Chew Choon Seng told PTI here.

He said if the governments of the Southeast and South Asia, including India, opened up the aviation market, a massive growth can be witnessed in this region. SIA had earlier pulled out of a consortium with Tatas for buying stake in Air-India.

"There are good growth opportunities in India but it all depends at the moment on the air traffic rights the country wants to grant," the chief of SIA, which is planning a direct connection to Ahmedabad from July and Amritsar later, said.

Strongly favouring liberalisation of the aviation sector worldwide, Chew described the United States government as the "most restrictive" of all, saying even after allowing a minimum foreign stake in its airlines, they put conditions for most members of the board to be US nationals and keep management of a carrier confined only to Americans.