India among the fastest growing Aviation markets globally: AAI

AIBM

India is growing, and it’s growing fast. India is currently one of the five fastest growing aviation markets in the world. India ranks 9^th in the global aviation market and aims to become the third largest by 2020 and the largest by 2030.

To achieve the goals set for the aviation industry of the country, the Airport Authority of India (AAI), last year, inaugurated various key projects like the new terminal building at Khajuraho, a new integrated terminal at Vadodra and more such initiatives to make the airports all weather compatible.

“It is well known that aircraft movement gets affected on the ground and in air due to low visibility and fog leading to slowdown of the entire air traffic. To address this and to provide an additional landing aid to pilots, AAI has provided Cat I, II and III instrument landing system (ILS) at its airports which encountered low visibility conditions during the year,” Guruprasad Mohapatra, AAI said in a press conference in New Delhi.

Everyone can fly now

As per the authority, ILS has proved to be a boon for the airlines and passengers and so far the system has been installed at more than 60 airports.

On one hand, the aviation ministry is developing the existing infrastructure to make air travel hassle-free and on the other hand, they are planning to make the regional connectivity affordable. In this direction, the ministry has already launched a Regional Connectivity Scheme, UDAN in October 2016.

UDAN (UdeDeshKaAamNagrik) envisages supporting the selected airline operators through concessions by central government, concerned state governments and airport operators to reduce the cost. The AAI serves as the implementing agency and is working on revival of un-served and underserved airports to facilitate regional connectivity scheme.

Revival of the airports is demand-driven, according to Mohapatra. “We have identified 51 airports which are ready for operation with an expenditure of up to INR 50 million. Other un-served airports will be made operational at an inductive cost of INR 500 million under the UDAN scheme” he added.

Aiming to travel hassle free

In order to make the travel experience hassle-free, the aviation ministry has also taken the advantage of technology by launching an AirSewa app. Through this app, the traveller will be able to seek redressal over the wide range of common issues like flight delay, refunds, baggage issues etc. Each grievance shared is directed to the nodal agency, which takes the immediate steps to get the issue resolved.

“Since the launch of this portal on December 25, 2016, we has received over 200 complaints out of which almost 90 pc have been resolved successfully and immediately,” said Mohapatra.

While the Indian aviation market is growing at the rate of over 11 pc, the focus has to be on improving connectivity and developing infrastructure to support the growth. Over the years, many initiatives and experiments have improved the quality of air travel in India, but there still is a long way to go to achieve the target of making air travel affordable and inclusive.