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Sunday, Feb 03, 2008
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Tamil Nadu
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Chennai
“Passenger traffic likely to grow from 90 million a year to 313 million by 2015” “Airport facilities and air traffic management systems are poor” CHENNAI: A National Aeronautics Commission has to be established at the earliest, said V. Thulasidas, Chairman and Managing Director, Air India. Speaking at the 59th Annual General Meeting of the Aeronautical Society of India here on Friday, Mr Thulasidas said the Commission would help in promoting and integrating the various organisations now working under different Ministries, to develop a vibrant and active national aeronautics programme. Aircraft movementThe civil aviation sector has also been growing by leaps and bounds. The aircraft movements had shown a growth rate of 17 per cent with 9.79 lakh landing/take-off per year in 2006-07 from Indian airports. The passenger traffic had grown by 22 per cent and the cargo by about 10 per cent in the last two years. The passenger traffic is estimated to grow from 90 million a year to 313 million by 2015 and 605 millions by 2020. The airline industry in the country is expected to spend more than Rs 1.32 lakh million by 2015 for purchasing aircraft, he said. In view of this growth, the airport infrastructure needed a rapid upgrading and expansion plan to cater to the projected demand. Airports needed to be equipped with the state-of-the-art navigational, weather and air traffic management systems. Apart from meeting the requirement of infrastructure, what is important is to have more number of trained and qualified manpower for supporting both the ground and flying staff requirements. To achieve this, a sound human resource planning and management system should get evolved. Similarly, for training pilots more simulators with the state-of-the-art systems should be installed, he said. Delivering the Dr. Neelanaktan memorial lecture at the meeting, Naresh Goyal, Chairman, Jet Airways, said the rapid strides that the Indian civil aviation industry has been making in the recent years has brought to the forefront the sorry state of affairs of the supporting infrastructure both in terms of airport facilities and air traffic management systems. “We all know that development and modernisation of infrastructure must go hand-in-hand with the growth of air travel, and the induction of additional aircraft by the operators,” he said. The growth rate in the airlines industry would stabilise at around 20 to 25 per cent per annum both on the domestic and international routes in and out of India for the next five to 10 years, Mr Goyal said. External factors such as rapid rise in crude oil prices, coupled with the fiscal policies of the Central and State Governments had contributed to the unhealthy state of the industry, he said. The operators themselves had played a large part in creating the situation by pursuing irrational pricing policies, often charging fares that had not covered costs, providing excess capacity and offered unsustainable pay and allowance packages to ‘attract’ qualified and trained personnel, which led to unachievable break-even load factors, he observed.
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