Increase in number of air passengers unexpected: Patel

The high growth and phenomenal increase in the number of air passengers in the country recently has been sudden and unexpected. This was stated by the Minister for Civil Aviation, Shri Praful Patel in a reply to a question in the Parliament today.
He said that the reason for the sudden spurt in the number of air passengers are because of – economic reforms, fast industrial development, rapid increase in buying power of a sizeable population, emergence of low-cost airlines and apex fare systems, Open Sky Policy, and liberal policy of license to new scheduled operators, liberal bilateral agreements, liberal permission for acquisition of new aircrafts by airlines, permission to domestic carriers to operate on international sectors including to the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
The Minister added that to cope with this increase in air passenger traffic the following actions have been taken or are being taken: constructions of new terminals, expansion of existing terminals, construction of additional aircrafts parking stands for overnight parking, construction of new rapid exit and parallel taxiways to enhance runway capacity, introduction of ATC procedures for simultaneous use of both runways at the IGI Airport in Delhi and CSI Airport in Mumbai, posting of additional ATC Officers in ATC Units, ban on general aviation and military flights during peak hours at IGI and CSI Airports, modernization and development of the IGI and the CSI Airports through joint-venture companies and construction of Greenfield airports at Bangalore and Hyderabad with Public-Private-Partnership.
06/03/07 Press Information Bureau (press release)

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Categories: General Aviation Mar 2007