Aviation Infrastructure is not commensurate with air traffic growth

INDIA is the second most vibrant aviation market after China. This statement is making the rounds in the aviation circles around the world. At the recently held Technical Press Briefing at Airbus Headquarters in Toulouse, South of France, the European company’s executives made it amply clear of this fact to editors from the world’s leading trade press. The reason they say is the strong growth anticipated in the domestic Indian traffic, which they estimate to be 12.7 per cent per annum by 2014. The main drivers of traffic growth they say are economic upswing, concentration of population, wealth and industries leading to higher propensity to travel and increasing liberalisation. And add to this there are penetrations of low-cost carriers which are offering exceptionally low airfare that can be compared with railway AC fares. India is the only country where the number of air travellers a year equals the number of rail passengers in a day. The potential is huge. So low-cost carries are not ready to waste their time and are very much into business.

Besides the existing Air Deccan, newly launched Spicejet and value airline Kingfisher Airlines, there are Indus Airways, Air One, East West Airlines, Go Airways, Magic Air and Crystal Air are getting ready to fly Indian sky soon. As the newcomers are getting into cut-throat fare-war, the Indian domestic passengers are going to have a good time ahead.

These are undoubtedly major reasons for steady growth in the domestic air traffic which is about 19 million now — a figure poised for an exponential rise by five million a year until 2010, by then India may see 50 million people flying every year. As the Indian aviation market is growing rapidly, the question arises weather the infrastructure is growing at same pace. Currently, India is having less than 200 aircraft operating domestically which operate only 600 flights a day. While budget airlines are exploring new routes of small and semi-towns to cater this huge untapped market, there is an urgent need for more aircraft. Budget airlines save their expenses by keeping limited number of aircraft and flying more to non-metro routes, which are not served by regular carriers. Given the current constraint of limited parking space at airports and long queue for landing and taking off during pick hours, low-cost carriers which operate on quick turnarounds are finding it difficult to maintain their punctuality. Even if a flight is late by several hours, passengers have no option but to wait, as often these airlines have no standby aircraft which sometimes even force them to cancel flights. Though almost all the airlines are having long shopping list, but the delivery rate is not fast enough to match the growing demand for more capacity. Faced with a shortage of leased aircraft, India’s first low-cost carrier Air Deccan has asked Airbus to advance the delivery schedule of the Airbus A320s by a year to 2006. Air Deccan had ordered 30 Airbus A320s and 30 ATRs whose deliveries were slated to being from 2007. It operates over 111 flights a day to 33 destinations, with a fleet of five Airbus A320s and 12 ATRs. Others airlines are too opting for early delivery of aircraft from their respective sellers. But the two aircraft giants — Airbus and Boeing — already have huge backlog of orders. So the question arises how fast they can fulfill India’s growing demands of aircraft.

Add to this shortage of aircraft there are other constraints that these budget airlines are facing. Poor infrastructure in airports, shortage of pilots, engineers and ATC staff and steady increase in ATF prices which account for 40 per cent of the cost of operation in India, are some of the major problems which are going to play a spoilsport in this growth.

The industry is growing rapidly which is the good thing but unless the aviation infrastructure grows with same pace, this new traveling group may continue to face such problems of flight delays and cancellation. This is certainly not an encouraging sign for these low-cast carriers who are calculating huge customer inflow in coming years.