Minister says India is building holistic airline ecosystem
The government has taken unprecedented steps across the spectrum to create capacities, remove bottlenecks and simplify processes and procedures, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya M Scindia said on 18 Jan at the inauguration of Aviation Expo-Wings India 2024
“This would ensure that in 2047, India has an aviation system that supports a US$20 trillion economy,” he said at the Hyderabad show, “Connecting India to the World in Amrit Kaal: Setting the Stage for India Civil Aviation @2047”.
“We are not only focusing on airplanes and airports, but the development and enhancement of building a holistic airline ecosystem that has strong roots across the value chain.
“As part of this vision, we have doubled number of Airports in the country in the last 9 years, increasing from 74 in 2014 to 149 now.”
The Minister pointed out that the Government has so far accorded ‘in-principle’ approval for setting up of 21 Greenfield Airports across the country, and 12 of these have been operationalised.
“We are also working on Capacity Enhancement at our Metro Airports where our overall capacity is slated to rise from 221 MPPA currently to over 468 MPPA in the next decade or so,” he informed.
Talking about India’s civil aviation growth story, the Minister said, “Total number of domestic pax rose from 60 million in 2014 to 143 million in 2020 growing at a CAGR of 14.5%, and is expected to have crossed the figure of 150 million in 2023.
“We are clocking more than 4.5 lakh Pax a day on a regular basis with a high of 4.67 lakh domestic passengers recently.”
In the six years leading to FY 2020 the number of international passengers had also grown at CAGR of 6.1%.
Domestic Cargo volumes handled by Indian airports in the 15 years leading to FY 2019 increased by 60% while international cargo volumes increased by 53%.
Despite tremendous growth in recent times, India still remains highly under-penetrated market.
Even if, as per projections, the number of domestic passengers reaches 635 million by FY 2030, India will still be one of the least penetrated of the 20 largest markets,” Scindia underscored.
Seven major announcements were made today at Wings India 2024:
Release of the joint knowledge paper on civil aviation by FICCI and KPMG;
Launch of UDAN 5.3;
Launch of the Airbus-Air India Training Centre, with the purchase of more airplanes and the setting of a flight training center in Gurugram with 10 flight simulators and 10,000 pilots being trained in the coming years;
Airbus manufacturing contracts with TATA ASL and Mahindra Aerospace Structures Pvt Ltd to foster more pilots;
GMR and IndiGo also signed a consortium to collaborate with multiple patterns in developing sustainable training in the aerospace industry;
Inauguration of the GMR School of Aviation;
Deal announcement of Akasa Air with a triple order of 200 aircrafts in a period of 17 months. Fiinews.com
