Thursday, January 19, 2017

Indian aviation is growing but it's straining airports: Why 1 in 4 flights are getting delayed

The fastest growing aviation market across the globe continues its struggle infrastructure and performance metrics of its airlines. Data released by DGCA show not a single airline managed to operate one in four flights on time from four of India’s busiest airports last month. This, when India’s airlines carried close to 10 crore passengers in 2016, with 12 consecutive months of above 20 percent growth. The delays have been increasing as traffic grows.

SpiceJet managed average on-time performance of just 70 percent across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad airports in December and this was the best on-time performance by any airline during December. As expected, Air India fared the worst with at least four in 10 flights getting delayed. And others fared only marginally better, getting almost every third flight from these airports delayed.

Traditionally, flying in and out of Mumbai has been the biggest bane for any airline due to massive congestion at this airport. Well, in December, Air India did not get even half its flights on time at this airport and even market leader IndiGo barely managed to get 50 percent of its flight on time here.

So when the government goes ga-ga over impressive traffic growth in the skies and talks of India becoming a global leader in aviation, it must consider developing a robust airport infrastructure too to keep pace with this kind of growth.

India’s aviation traffic almost doubled in the last six years. Airport capacity hasn’t. Infrastructure has failed to keep pace with traffic growth fueled by rising incomes and affordable fares.

This piece says the average time an aircraft spends circling before it can land in Mumbai during peak hours is about 45 minutes to an hour, versus 25 minutes for Singapore and zero for Qatar, according to Dubai-based Martin Consulting LLC. A proposal for a new airport in the outskirts of Mumbai has languished on the drawing board since 1997 even as Boeing Co. estimates Indian carriers need 1,740 aircraft over the next two decades.
18/01/17 Sindhu Bhattacharya/First Post
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

0 comments:

Post a Comment