No wings to take flight

Indian civil aviation is at the crossroads. On the one hand, it is seeing an explosion in air travel of the kind the planners scarcely imagined. In 2008, the number of flyers in Indian skies was just 44 million. This year the number is expected to cross 300 million. The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation predicts India will overtake UK as the world’s third-largest market by 2025 and will have 478 million fliers by 2036. On the other hand, expansion of airport infrastructure has been unable to keep pace.

Currently the country’s network is designed to cater to 317 million. We are close to the tipping point. Mumbai is at 94 per cent saturation, and its single runway earlier this year hit the world record by handling 980 flights in a 24-hour cycle. Things have reached a stage where poor infrastructure—insufficient runways and passenger handling facilities—have become an obstacle to the growth of aviation. Planners have been taken off guard as no one had envisaged a combination of rising incomes, lower fares and increasing competition among airlines would create such a spike in air passenger traffic.

The new Kuala Lumpur Airport, completed in 1998, has three runways and can handle 70 million passengers annually. A decade ago it seemed empty and over-built, but that was because it was planned for passenger traffic 30 years forward. In contrast, Dehradun’s Jolly Grant Airport was refurbished with a brand new terminal building in 2009, but sadly it is already handling passengers beyond its capacity.
Airports are the gateway to a country, and a passenger’s experience leaves a lasting impression.

It is therefore imperative the government and the airline industry pull up their socks. India has planned an infusion of $120 billion to upgrade existing airports and build 200 new ones. However, is there a will to meet targets? The proposed airport in Navi Mumbai has been delayed by over a decade because of environmental and land acquisition issues. Such delays will cost us dearly in terms of both growth and international credibility.