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Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday said the airline sector is on a revival mode — with 382,000 passengers travelling daily in the last seven days — and hoped that the total passenger traffic will rise to 400 million by 2023-24.
The number of air passengers was 145 million in 2018-19. The traffic fell to 83.8 million in 2021 due to the pandemic.
Replying to the Demands for Grants, 2022-23, for the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Scindia further said Rs 1 trillion of investments will be made in green and brownfield airports in the country in the next 2-3 years by both Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the private sector.
He also defended the government’s move to lease out airports to private entities, saying the profitability of the AAI will increase due to this.
The government has brought about a paradigm shift, a structural change in the sector in the last two years and will focus on inclusion, access and affordability to increase demand, the minister said.
“The democratisation of civil aviation has taken place in the last 7 years. Earlier, it was limited to only a few people,” he said, adding that earlier, only big cities had airports and 66 new airports were added during the Modi government’s term. Air passenger count rose from 67 million in 2013-14 to 145 million in 2018-19. The number of planes too increased from 400 from 2013-14 to 710 by 2018-19.
Scindia said the aviation sector started to look up after the second Covid wave and the number of air travellers in the country increased to 390,000 per day in November 2021, compared to 415,000 per day in pre-Covid times.
Till 2014, there were 74 airports in the country and in the last 7 years, 66 new airports were added. The total number of airports in the country now stands at 140, which we resolve to take to 220 by 2025, Scindia said.
He said the civil aviation sector has an economic multiplier effect of 3.1 times and is a key element of India’s economy with massive employment generation opportunities.
Scindia said over 90 flights were operated to evacuate Indian students from Ukraine amid the Russia-Ukraine war. Of this, Indigo operated 35 flights, Air India 14, Go First 6, Air Asia 3, Spicejet and Air India Express 9 each for transporting Indians back home under ‘Operation Ganga’.
The minister also said 15 per cent of pilots in India were women, as against the global average of 5 per cent. “This is a great example of women empowerment,” he said.
He said that at a time when the airline industry world over is facing turbulence, two new airlines, Jet and Akasa, will soon launch their services.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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