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400 million flyers milestone by 2024, says Scindia
Scindia said in Parliament that at a time when the airline industry across the world was facing turbulence, two new airlines, Jet and Akasa, were soon to launch their services in the country
About 382,000 people travelled by air daily over the last week, Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Wednesday, signalling that the sector was bouncing back after being battered by the Omicron wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Scindia said in Parliament that at a time when the airline industry across the world was facing turbulence, two new airlines, Jet and Akasa, were soon to launch their services in the country. He set a target of nearly tripling the total passenger traffic by 2023-24 to 400 million.
“We have seen as many as 382,000 passengers traveling daily in the last seven days… There is a hope of revival and based on that, we expect that by 2023-24, we will take the number of passengers to 40 crore,” the civil aviation minister said.
He said the aviation sector started to look up after the second wave of Covid-19, and the number of air travellers in the country increased to 390,000 per day in November 2021, compared to 415,000 per day in the pre-Covid times. “We were nearly 5% away from touching the pre-Covid level but due to Omicron, it came down 160,000 per day,” Scindia said.
Replying to the Demands for Grants, 2022-23 for the ministry of civil aviation in the Lok Sabha, he said that the government has brought about a paradigm shift, a structural change in the sector in the last two years and it will focus on inclusion, access and affordability to increase demand among the people.
The Union minister also said that women pilots in India were over 15% of the total force. “In all other countries in the world, only 5% of pilots are women,” he told the House.
Till 2014, there were 74 airports in the country, and in the last seven years, 66 new airports were added, he said. “Our resolve is to take this number up to 220 by 2025,” Scindia added.
“The democratisation of civil aviation has taken place in the last seven years. The sector that was restricted to a few classes of the society has opened up for all due to ‘Udey Desh Ka Aam Naagarik’ (Centre’s regional connectivity scheme),” Scindia said.
