Bengaluru/New Delhi: Hours after the Union Finance Minster, Arun Jaitley announced that the Airports Authority of India (AAI) will upgrade several airports, its chairman disclosed that the state-owned airport developer plans to spend ₹14,000-₹15,000 crore in the next fiscal for the creation of new airport terminals.
Guruprasad Mohapatra, Chairman, Airports Authority of India, told BusinessLine that the AAI will expand the capacity of 124 airports through the new investment.
The regional air connectivity scheme ( Udan) will also be expanded to connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads.
While most stakeholders have lauded the government’s move to expand airport capacity, the initiative may come unstuck if metro airports, mostly run by private enterprises, resist the Centre’s move to allot slots for regional airlines.
The Budget proposes to expand the capacity of airports five times to cater to one billion passengers a year (No timeline was mentioned). As of now around 100 million travel by air in the country, of whom only 25-30 million are frequent flyers.
Capt GR Gopinath, the pioneer of low-cost airlines in the country, termed the initiative ‘visionary and transformative’. He said the main metro airports have about 80 per cent of the traffic, which makes for skewed growth.
“For Udan to succeed, you need connectivity from regional airports to the metros. But the metros are not allocating slots for regional airlines,” Capt Gopinath said.
IATA’s country director, India, Amitabh Khosla said there was a big question mark on capacity, adding that, “Navi Mumbai airport is still a distant dream. In the meantime, Mumbai continues to fall behind in aviation activity, and Maharashtra is unable to maximise the economic potential that can be delivered by aviation. We urge the government to urgently look at innovative approaches to bridge the infrastructure shortfall.”
01/02/18 K Giriprakash/Business Line
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Guruprasad Mohapatra, Chairman, Airports Authority of India, told BusinessLine that the AAI will expand the capacity of 124 airports through the new investment.
The regional air connectivity scheme ( Udan) will also be expanded to connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads.
While most stakeholders have lauded the government’s move to expand airport capacity, the initiative may come unstuck if metro airports, mostly run by private enterprises, resist the Centre’s move to allot slots for regional airlines.
The Budget proposes to expand the capacity of airports five times to cater to one billion passengers a year (No timeline was mentioned). As of now around 100 million travel by air in the country, of whom only 25-30 million are frequent flyers.
Capt GR Gopinath, the pioneer of low-cost airlines in the country, termed the initiative ‘visionary and transformative’. He said the main metro airports have about 80 per cent of the traffic, which makes for skewed growth.
“For Udan to succeed, you need connectivity from regional airports to the metros. But the metros are not allocating slots for regional airlines,” Capt Gopinath said.
IATA’s country director, India, Amitabh Khosla said there was a big question mark on capacity, adding that, “Navi Mumbai airport is still a distant dream. In the meantime, Mumbai continues to fall behind in aviation activity, and Maharashtra is unable to maximise the economic potential that can be delivered by aviation. We urge the government to urgently look at innovative approaches to bridge the infrastructure shortfall.”
01/02/18 K Giriprakash/Business Line
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