In her budget speech, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government intends to spend Rs 1.7 lakh crore for transport infrastructure. The plan includes building 100 more airports until 2024. She also referred to the growing air traffic in the country and that the government expects the fleet to be doubled by 2024. The country currently has 650+ commercial aircraft and a strong order book from IndiGo, Spicejet and Go Air.
But statistics and numbers can be misleading. How can we think of 100 more airports in the next 50 months when the wait for an airport at Navi Mumbai has now been more than 10 years?
There are a total of 495 airports (these include airstrips) in the country. Several of these are shared by defence establishments, Airports Authority of India (AAI), state governments or private companies. Only 109 airports are operational. The rest remain unused.
These include every known airstrip in the country –including the Air Force Academy at Dundigal or the short airstrip at National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla – which will never see commercial operations.
Over the past three years, there was a sudden surge to operationalise the airports. This was primarily due to the ambitious Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) – UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik).
While the scheme has been much criticised, it recently saw 250th route being put into operation and more have followed since then. The first phase of the scheme focused on starting services to un-served and underserved routes, the later phases merely looked at connecting routes.
27/02/20 Ameya Joshi/CNBC TV18
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But statistics and numbers can be misleading. How can we think of 100 more airports in the next 50 months when the wait for an airport at Navi Mumbai has now been more than 10 years?
There are a total of 495 airports (these include airstrips) in the country. Several of these are shared by defence establishments, Airports Authority of India (AAI), state governments or private companies. Only 109 airports are operational. The rest remain unused.
These include every known airstrip in the country –including the Air Force Academy at Dundigal or the short airstrip at National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla – which will never see commercial operations.
Over the past three years, there was a sudden surge to operationalise the airports. This was primarily due to the ambitious Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) – UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik).
While the scheme has been much criticised, it recently saw 250th route being put into operation and more have followed since then. The first phase of the scheme focused on starting services to un-served and underserved routes, the later phases merely looked at connecting routes.
27/02/20 Ameya Joshi/CNBC TV18
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