- Thursday, April 18, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
India on Monday (20) outlined plans to invest billions in its aviation infrastructure such as airports, aircraft and recruitment to meet a booming demand in the air travel industry.
Addressing an industry audience, the country’s civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said the growth will include new airports, more regulators and air traffic controllers besides new flying schools, Reuters reported.
“We need to put in place the civil aviation infrastructure and capabilities that by 2047 would be able to support a $20 trillion economy within India,” he told the CAPA India Aviation Summit in New Delhi, the report added.
Earlier this year, India’s Narendra Modi government said that the country would spend a whopping Rs 980 billion by 2025 to improve the regional connectivity by setting up new airports and upgrading the existing ones.
While India’s aviation sector has seen a heavy growth potential, weak infrastructure has been considered a bane, particularly when it comes to connecting the country’s hinterlands to major cities to get more people to take the air route.
According to Scindia, passenger capacity at India’s six major airports is expected to grow to 420 million in four years from 192 million currently, while Indian carriers’ fleet will grow to 2,000 aircraft in five years from 700.
Airline traffic has seen a quick recovery from Covid-19 restrictions that led to grounding of jets worldwide in 2020, with manufacturers now working overtime to keep pace with aircraft demand while shortage of engines has grounded some planes.
“Surprisingly and shockingly, the situation has turned the other way. Where at one point we did not have passengers to fill our airplanes … now we do not have enough airplanes to fly our passengers,” Scindia said.
To help fill the gap, India has tweaked its airplane-leasing programme, including more “wet leasing” or renting of planes with crew, for domestic and international routes, the minister added.
According to consultancy CAPA India estimates, at least 1,300 more orders are likely to emerge from Indian airlines in the next 1-2 years, weeks after the Tata-owned Air India announced a record order for 470 planes from manufacturing giants Boeing and Airbus.
However, it also cautioned that industry, which is notorious for its cyclical pattern, could tip back towards surplus, the Reuters report added.
CAPA chief executive Kapil Kaul said Indian airlines were flying over 90 per cent full even during the normally quieter weekdays — “a sign of shortages”.
He also said that there is a “serious shortage of experienced pilots, particularly for wide-bodies”.
