Domestic travel crosses pre-Covid level: Scindia

On April 18, India had crossed the record of over 400,000 daily air passengers, the country’s highest since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had earlier termed the development as a “historic day” for the ministry.

India has surpassed pre-Covid levels of domestic passengers per day and there is a strong positive forecast for the coming years, Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Friday.

Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.

On April 18, India had crossed the record of over 400,000 daily air passengers, the country’s highest since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Scindia had earlier termed the development as a “historic day” for the ministry.

“India is one of the fastest growing aviation market in the world. Post pandemic last week, we have finally been able to breach our pre-pandemic passengers per day. Our previous high was 400,000 pet day, last week, it was 470,000 per day,” Scindia said at an event organised by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC).

“Therefore there has been a very strong bounce back post Covid-19 even though the sector was hammered the most, globally. The sector has bounced back tremendously,” he added.

The Centre had banned all international scheduled flights for a week starting March 23, 2020. The ban stretched for nearly two years in the midst of a raging pandemic. However, special international flights were allowed to operate between India and 37 other countries from July 2020 under an air bubble arrangement.

On March 8 this year, the government announced the resumption of routine international flight operations from March 27.

At the event, Scindia also said that India is undergoing rapid urbanisation and that 75 per cent of its national income is going to come from cities by 2031. Transport and logistics will be playing a pivotal role in deciding India’s destiny in the coming decade, he said.

The country is home to approximately 140 airports now and the government plans to increase them by 50% in the next four to five years, Scindia said. “The country will increase its commercial fleet size from 710 planes currently to 1,200 aircraft in the coming five years,” he added.

The drone service sector holds tremendous promise and will provide about one lakh jobs in the next four-five years, Scindia said. The Centre is looking to rapidly expanding its flying training organisations and will increase their numbers from 34 to 58 in the coming few years, he added.

“We took out a productivity-linked (PLI) scheme for the drone sector where a nascent industry of drone manufacturing -- which had a total revenue of ₹60 crore -- was given an incentive of ₹120 crore over the next three years,” Scindia said.

Under the government’s flagship PLI scheme that was announced last year, the incentive for a manufacturer of drones and drone components will be 20% of the value addition made by the company during the next three years. The value addition is calculated as the annual sales revenue from drones and drone components (net of GST) minus the purchase cost (net of GST) of drone and drone components.

The civil aviation ministry has released the names of 14 drone companies selected as beneficiaries of the PLI scheme.

“We are looking at the creation of 100,000 jobs over the next four-five years. It is an area of tremendous promise,” Scindia said.