Belying hopes of a recovery, the Economic Survey on Thursday said the civil aviation sector was unlikely to fly out of the current slowdown and attain the projected five per cent growth in passenger traffic despite several promotional schemes offered by airlines.
"It was anticipated that
during the current year, the impact of September 11, 2001, incident in USA would start tapering off and the market would show improvement and achieve the projected growth of five per cent in passenger traffic," the Survey, tabled in Parliament, said.
"These expectations have, however, not materialised despite various promotional schemes or fares being offered by airlines operators," it added.
Domestic air services are provided by Indian Airlines and private operators, including the two scheduled carriers - Jet Airways and Air Sahara - and 40 non-scheduled operators.
Private scheduled and non-scheduled operators cater to nearly 52.6 per cent of the domestic air traffic.
The number of passengers carried by these private operators has increased from 15,000 in 1990 to about 6.7 million in 2001.
The Survey noted that the process of disinvestment in both Indian Airlines and Air India "has been delayed because of lack of interest on the part of the bidders due to the overall downturn in global economic scenario".