Railways carry a year's air traffic in one day: Akasa Air co-founder Aditya Ghosh

Aditya Ghosh, co-founder of Akasa Air and former director of IndiGo, said the total number of air passengers in India in a year is about the same number of passengers that the Indian Railways carries in a day.  

The co-founder of Akasa Air was speaking on the growth prospect of air travel in the country in a podcast and added, “So if you could magically convert one day's worth of rail traffic to air, we will need 500 more airplanes in the country.” 

Shedding more light on the air travel scenario in the country, he said air travel in India grows at about 2x of GDP growth typically. To maintain the same load factor considering the growth in passenger numbers 75 more airplanes will be needed next year. “Between all the airlines, who have ordered airplanes today, let’s say there are a thousand airplanes, but those are going to come over the next 10 years and many of them will replace the existing fleet. So, for a long long period of time we have this supply constraint market in India where demand is far outstripping the supply,” Ghosh said. 

Drawing a comparison between the United States and India, the airline expert highlighted the potential for airlines. The US has over 14,000 airports while India has got something around 150-200 airports after the government’s recent focus on building infrastructure for air travel in the country, he said, adding that this shows the immense potential and the need to double airports in the country. 

“India is a 1.4-billion population country with 500 aircraft whereas the US has 330 million people. An airline like the Southwest Airlines, which is not even the US’s largest airline has over 1,000 airplanes. So, if we had to catch up with one airline in the US, we would need to double the aviation industry, he said. 

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cited the example of the aviation industry to dispel income inequality charges. 

To back his claim that prosperity has increased, the Prime Minister cited demand in the aviation sector. Earlier, he said the number of people boarding an airplane was few, today an order had been booked for one thousand new planes. "Today we have around six hundred - seven hundred planes government and private combined together, now there are one thousand new airplanes got booked, which means the prosperity has increased," he said. 

Air travel in India 

Domestic passenger air traffic is expected to grow steadily in the current fiscal year. After growing by 13 percent in the previous year, air passenger traffic in India is expected to grow 8-10 percent in FY2025, according to the latest estimate by ICRA.  

While in FY24, some domestic air traffic surged to 307 million, this year the number may touch 340 million. Since the COVID-19 pandemic rattled the aviation industry, the market in India has bounced back sharply. From 105 million domestic passenger traffic in FY21, it jumped to 167 million in the following year - growing 59 percent year-on-year. In FY23, it further grew 62 percent to 270 million. 

In fact, the recovery in the number of passenger traffic in India post-pandemic has been better than most economies, it said. In India, the overall passenger traffic in 2023 was 6 percent higher than the 2019 levels. In leading economies and/or regions like Europe and China, the 2023 numbers are 5.3 percent and 6.1 percent lower than 2019 levels, respectively. 

While in the USA, the passage traffic numbers are just at 2019 levels, in Canada & Australia, its 8.6 percent and 8.5 percent lower, respectively.