India@100 : Airline passengers to overtake Railways' airconditioned travellers in next 7 years, says Scindia

Civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has forecast that in another seven years airlines will overtake the railway in terms of airconditioned travel.

“Pre-pandemic the first and second AC had close to 185 million travellers. The delta between civil aviation and railways is roughly about 40 million travellers per year. However, if you look at the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for the Railways is close to 5.6 per cent, while the CAGR for civil aviation is close to 10.3 per cent,” the minister said in the inaugural session of Business Today India 100: Achieving Global Leadership conclave in New Delhi.

“Therefore, it is my prediction that in the years to come you are going to look at the number of travellers in civil aviation becoming pretty much the bulwark of airconditioned travel in India,” he added.

Talking about the growth trajectory of the civil aviation sector the minister told the managing editor of Business Today TV, Siddharth Zarabi that by adding 67 airports in the last eight years, the country had nearly doubled its capacity from a mere 74 airports in 2013-14. He was equally bullish on the passenger growth.

“Pre-pandemic we had 144 million domestic travellers and 60 million international travellers. I forecast that in the next 5-7 years that number of 200 million is going to grow to 400 million travellers,” he said.

The minister also said that the Ministry of Civil Aviation had planned aggressive expansion in capacity at airports.

“In the next five years, we are looking at a Capex plan of close to Rs 97,000 crores. That covers state-owned airports managed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), which has a very aggressive brownfield as well as greenfield programme,” he said.

Close to 42 airports on the brownfield side were currently being upgraded and new terminals were being built at a Capex of around Rs 30,000 crores. Three new greenfield projects in Holongi, Dholera and Hirasar were planned for another Rs 35,000 crores. And on the private sector side, seven current brownfield airports were being expanded at close to Rs 34,000 crores, with an additional four new greenfield projects planned for nearly Rs 31,000 crores.

The minister once again reiterated that regional routes will play a significant role in the next phase of growth of the country’s aviation industry.

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