“Aviation sector is the sunrise sector of growth and going through profound changes”, remarked Mr. Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, while addressing the 89th Annual General Meeting of FICCI.
The aviation sector has dramatic headroom for growth with 150 million passenger trips a year as compared to China with 450 million passenger trips and USA at 800 million passenger trips a year. The total revenue of airlines is Rs 1.4 lakh crore and is growing at a rate of 20%. He added that as of today 9 crore passenger travel domestically and 5 crore internationally.
He emphasized that the government is committed to safety and security and will launch the unified command of CISF in the entire aviation system.
The minister specified that there are three priorities for the government. The first is better, delightful and digital experience through AirSewa, which serves as an integrated collaborative platform. Adopting the Kaizen principle, the Ministry will bring continuous improvement in the areas of airport facilities, decrease in immigration lines, customer services etc. Second, under the Regional Connectivity Scheme, the government is working for expansion of aviation map from 75 to 150 airports in the country. Recently the airports of Kanpur and Bhatinda have become operational under the scheme.
Going ahead, he said that government is working to build airport capacity by expanding existing terminals, building new terminals and developing greenfield airports. The Minister said that Rs 2.5-3 lakh crore investment is required for airports excluding the land acquisition cost. He added that government is a developing regulatory framework for the aviation sector to make it asset class attractive.
Asked about the performance of Air India, the Minister said that all operating factors including load factor, cabin crew are looking positive. However, a clear strategy is to be defined to make it financially robust.