Bangalore. 01 July 2019. As the Minister for Civil Aviation reviewed the growth of airport infrastructure in India and called for preparation of a holistic “Vision – 2040”. The vision is expected to address issues such as congestion at airports, runways and airspace; development of unserved and under-served airports; ways and means to boost the air connectivity to small cities and towns – thereby increasing revenues, People from small villages are also becoming air travelers. We want to ensure every nook and corner of the country has air connectivity. It will further provide a direction to the economic development in these areas in terms of job creation and cargo infrastructure development.
Observing that growth of airport infrastructure in many places has not kept pace with the passenger traffic, the Minister of Civil Aviation urged AAI and other Airport operators to bolster their efforts to build new infrastructure and to expand existing airports to enhance the facilities available, keeping in view the pace of growth of Indian aviation sector.
The Minister reviewed the on-going and planned expansion works at various airports. He examined the capacity of each airport against the number of passengers travelled and reviewed the measures being taken to decongest them. He noted the issues arising in expanding the existing airports as well as in constructing the new ones in different States and said that he would take up those issues with respective State Governments. The Minister asked the officials to suggest innovative land acquisition methods – a serious problem faced at many cities.
There are 71 known existing Indian airports with construction projects, where the collective investment total is USD14.07 billion (where the amount is known). Only five airports have projects valued at over USD1 billion – Bangalore (USD2 bn); Chennai (USD1.1 bn); Delhi (USD1.8 bn), Jaipur (USD1.7 bn); and Mumbai (USD2.9 bn). The total for Asia as a whole is currently USD170 billion and the figure for India is USD4.6 billion.
India will purchase 2,300 new airplanes. We are coming up with the strategy to set up the roadmap and ecosystem to improve the manufacturing destination in India. The Civil Aviation Minister said that “There are 103 airports and we want to build another 100 in coming years. We want to connect remote areas of the country to air, investing $65 billion dollars. Under a scheme, a program has been launched to connect 235 new destinations.
India will become the third largest aviation market in the next seven years. India has 57 new airports under development or consideration at a known total value of USD16 billion, out of a total of USD147.8 billion in Asia. That is slightly more than in the whole of Africa. There are three over USD2 billion – Navi Mumbai, Delhi Noida and Pune. Overall, USD10 billion will be spent on developing airport infrastructure over the next five years by the government alone.
Airports Authority of India will partner with the State Governments to develop some of these airports for regional connectivity. Similarly, 10 of the 25 non-functional air strips with the Airport Authority of India are also to be developed. Only a handful of big airports have been privatized and Airports Authority of India, which operates 137 airports, remains a very significant player and the state generally is still very much part of the set-up.
We TraiCon Events Pvt Ltd have executed two consecutive Airport Modernization Summit 2017 and 2018 which were very successful. Now we TraiCon Events are proud to announce the 3rd Annual Airport Modernization Summit 2019 scheduled on 3rd & 4th July 2019. This forum will bring together key government and private aviation sector stake holders, Government Bodies and Authorities under one roof to discuss on the challenges and opportunities in developing and modernizing the Indian Aviation sector.
