By D. Murali and C. Ramesh

With rising purchasing power of consumers in a booming Indian economy, fuelled by the growth of the services sector in particular, air travel is becoming more and more commonplace among the growing middle class. Moreover, it has become more affordable with the arrival of several low-cost carriers in the past few years.

However, a direct fallout of this growth has been airport congestion, which has emerged as a major pain point in the developing Indian air travel story. And the reasons are not far to seek. “Airport congestion is mainly due to phenomenal increase in air traffic levels, arising from carriers procuring aircraft at a tremendous pace to keep pace with the surge in demand,” says Mr Gurvinder Pal Singh Arora, Senior Manager (Advisory Services), KPMG.

“It results in inconvenience to passengers, time delays in landing and take-off schedule, baggage woes since transport and other facilities are shared and losses on account of fuel surcharges and congestion fees. On top of it all is wastage of huge financial resources on fuel, which results from aircraft circling the airport waiting for landing approval.”

Speaking to Business Line on the burning issue that confronts Government, airlines and other stakeholders, he says that though the process of upgradation and modernisation of airport infrastructure has begun, it will take its own time due to the tremendous backlog.

“The Ministry of Civil Aviation is trying to address this problem in the short term by putting a cap on the number of departures and arrivals per hour at Delhi and Mumbai airports. Congestion levels are very high at both these airports, particularly during the peak holiday summer season.”

But, he says, before detailing the reasons for congestion at airports and the steps being taken to rectify this problem, “it is essential to compare our aircraft movement in India with other parts of the world.”

According to him, the airports of Atlanta and Los Angeles handle as much traffic as all Indian airports put together. Studies show that the airports at Paris, Frankfurt and London handle as much volume in a month what the Delhi and Mumbai airports handle in a year.

So, how do we go about clearing the congestion and improving efficiencies? “Long neglect of airport infrastructure has resulted in the inability to handle the pressures of rising air traffic. Adding to problem are insufficient parking space, runways and ground handling equipment. The Government is addressing this issue by opening up the field for private players.”

This has led to greenfield airports at Bangalore and Hyderabad and brownfield projects at Delhi and Mumbai.

Besides, it is making “slow but concrete efforts to develop airports or airstrips at tier 2/3 cities.”

Also, he adds, there is greater pressure from the Ministry of Aviation to ensure that the process of building more rapid exit taxiways is hastened at Delhi and Mumbai.

Another reason for the congestion is the practice of airlines booking regular orders for more and more aircraft without paying attention to aspects of airport capacity. “Airport operators and airlines have to interact more closely to understand each other’s expectations and constraints,” says Mr Arora. “The Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) has been formed by airlines to represent their issues collectively to airports, the Ministry and other agencies.”

He also says that the Ministry and the respective Defence authorities must work together on optimising the utilisation of restricted air space. (Currently, there are curbs on airspace due to Defence and security reasons.)

A key factor contributing to airport congestion is inability to handle more than 35 aircraft movements per hour. “Some international airports can handle more than 60 movements an hour. We need to enhance our technological abilities to efficiently use our limited resources.”

Besides, availability of second or third airports in metros can lessen the burden on existing airports by sharing the fast-increasing passenger and cargo traffic. In this respect, he says that the Government must accelerate the process of finalising the award of second greenfield airports at locations where scope to develop the existing facility is limited.

Mr Arora also wants State Governments and the Ministry to jointly address the issue of absence of separate airstrips or ATC facilities for chartered and privately owned flights. “There is a need to look into allowing use of private land for development of privately owned airports.”

He also points to high lead waiting time between takeoff and landing and great distance between movements of aircraft as reasons. “The AAI has also allowed an aircraft to land or take off on an ‘active runway,’ i.e., soon after another aircraft has confirmed that it has vacated the runway.”

Touching on the issue of improper scheduling of flights, he says during some hours of the day there is peak activity, while the rest of the day sees under-utilisation of infrastructure.

“Airports and airlines both need to review the current profile of the commuters in different hours of the day and explore whether they can optimise use of airport facilities by providing some incentives to commuters during non-peak hours.”

Aircraft movements (in numbers)

Airports 2006

Atlanta 9,76,447Los Angeles 6,56,842Paris 5,41,556Frankfurt 4,89,406London 4,77,029Amsterdam 4,40,163All of India (Annualised) 11,88,120Source: Airports Council International

Mr Arora has extensive knowledge of airport business processes. He is also guiding the KPMG team working on the Mumbai airport providing assistance to GVK, South African airport consortium. His focus has been on delivering internal audit and risk management services to KPMG’s key clients across various industry segments.