Government to build 100 new airports in 15 years to tap the growing market

The government is planning to establish 100 new airports to expand connectivity and cater to the potential demand in the next 15 years.

The number of airports in the country will be double that of the present number once these airports are constructed. This will cost an estimated Rs 4 lakh crore, informed aviation minister Jayant Sinha.

Of these, 70 will be constructed in places where there is no airport, others will be either second airport in major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, etc. or an expansion of existing airports.

“Airport planning in the past was such that an airport is saturated by the time its development work is completed,” The Economic Times quoted Sinha. “We need to get out of that incremental trap and think for the future and take a long-term view. We will need to add about 100 new airports, as aviation in India grows.”

India is currently the fastest growing aviation market in the world with just 100 airports. The domestic passenger traffic is doubling almost every five years. It has grown from 2.3 crore passengers in 2005 to 5.1 crore in 2010 and now it stands at nearly 10 crore in 2016.

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According to Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) data, this makes India the third largest domestic air market in the world. The organisation also predicted that the domestic air traffic will cross 13 crore in the current financial year.

Airlines like IndiGo, Vistara and SpiceJet will be adding hundreds of airplanes in their fleet to tap the growing market. Add to it the UDAN scheme by the government which plans to provide flights for tier-II and tier-III cities at Rs 2,500. This would require a significant increase in the number of airports in the country.

Most of the 70 airports will be built in the cities where there is potential but there is no space to land a plane.

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The government will have to deal with a tricky issue of land acquisition for the airports. Typically, an airport requires 400 to 5,000 acres, depending on the size and scope of the project.

“Land acquisition is a state subject and we could try innovative models to expedite the process. Methods like land pooling or finding a way to make landowners shareholders in the airport project or JVs with states to expedite (projects) are a few of them,” said Sinha.