India’s civil aviation sector was poised to fly high and may witness a compound growth of 15% per annum for the next 20 years eventually to surpass United States and China as the biggest civil aviation market in the world, experts at Wings India 2018 said. However to achieve this target the oil prices should remain soft at below 80 $per barrel.
The biennial conference and exhibition of the civil aviation sector at the Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad was inaugurated on Thursday by the Secretary Civil Aviation R N Chaube and Telangana Minister for industries and commerce K Taraka Rama Rao.
Ten countries including the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Iran and Italy and 25 States of India were participating in the four day event.
15 aircrafts of ATR, Honda, Trujet, Gulfstream, Boeing, Embraer, Dassault, Club One Air, Aeroteck, Zook Air, Air India and NlA were at static display at the exhibition.
Union civil aviation minister P Ashok Gajapati Raju was to inaugurated the event but due to the dramatic overnight change in political situation resulting in his resignation from cabinet cast its shadows on the event.
Addressing the inaugural session RN Chaube said that India was already the third biggest civil aviation market in the country and its size can double over the next four-five years taking the number of passengers per annum to 800 million.
While the growth over the last three years was around 20% this year it was around 17.5%, he said. Giving an idea of the spurt in the growth in civil aviation in the country he said that over the last 67 years the fleet in the country had only 395 aircrafts but during only three years only orders were placed for 900 aircrafts which will be delivered over the next four-five years.
“Number of cities connected by air in 67 years was only 75 at the rate of just one city per year. But with the launch of Regional connectivity service to provide depth and connectivity to hinterland and smaller towns, in two years 56 airports were awarded”, he said
Pointing out that 70% of the airtraffic in the country was among the 10-12 major cities, Chaube said that the emphasis was now on connecting the smaller cities and towns under UDAN or udega desh ka aam nagrik (common citizen will fly).
“Regional connectivity needs creating more airports and that needs land. Fortunately we have 400 airstrips in the country built at the time of world war II”, he said.
He said that air travel will not be affordable if smaller aircrafts of 19, 42 or 72 seats were flown to the smaller cities as the fare will be 50% more and cost will be one and a half times more. He said keeping
this in view the Government took the significant political decision of giving direct subsidy and upgrade the airports if the airlines come forward to fly to the smaller cities.
Of the 56 airports identified, 18 have already become operational and two new airports were being added every month and in 6 to 8 months all the airports will become operational.
Talking of the 15% annual growth in the sector, Chaube said that in a country of 1.25 billion people, one middle class person flies one way only once in four years because of lack of connectivity.
“if you take the airport closer to the place of business there will be a growth of 15% every year. If only 400 million passenger fly two way once in a year it will mean 800 million tickets”, he said.
The challenge will be doubling the capacity of the airports every four five years. As land is not available in the cities we will have to make the existing airport efficient.
In bigger cities like Delhi and Mumbai airports will have to be expanded”, he said.
Telangana’s Minister for industries and commerce K Taraka Rama Rao said that Hyderabad had already emerged as a hub of aerospace and civil aviation and country’s first Greenfield airport in the country in Hyderabad with 18 million passengers a year was consistently winning the award of World’s Best airport in its category.
Big companies like Boeing, Airbus, GE and Pratt & Whitney’s already had their facilities in the city and three aerospace parks including two SEZs were already located in the city.
He urged the Centre to set up a center of the National Aviation University at the Begumpet Airport to produced the skilled manpower to meet the growing requirements of the civil aviation sector.