Accident will not clip aviation sector’s wings

New Delhi: The Air India Express crash in Mangalore is not likely to dampen the domestic aviation industry’s growth in any significant manner, say experts.
Saturday morning’s crash adds to a list of imponderables that the airline industry has been grappling with of late, from the ash clouds disrupting European flights to bloody unrest in one of the most popular tourist destinations for Indians — Bangkok.
“In the long run, it will not impact the industry as more people are flying in the recovering economy. There might be a slight slowdown in voluntary travel, but business travel will be largely un-impacted,” says KPMG director Amber Dubey.
No wonder many industry observers are dismissing Saturday’s tragic accident as an exception to an otherwise relatively clean record of safety norms and pilot training of the aviation sector in India, contrary to other reports on the uncomfortable number of ‘near misses’ reported in the last few years.
Economic buoyancy of the last six months and aggressive house-keeping by most players have helped improve airline yields, which were hit by the global downturn in 2008-09. Load factor of Indian carriers improved from 64% in 2008-09 to 73% last fiscal. The number of passengers carried by domestic carriers was 162.82 lakh in January-April in 2010 as compared to 133.41 lakh in the year-ago period.
23/05/10 Vishakha Talreja/Financial Express

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Categories: Air India Budget May 2010, Airports May 2010, NACIL May 2010, Safety May 2010