Civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday said passengers travelling by air has increased but the number of aircraft in the country remains less.
The minister was speaking at an international conference on Advanced & Short-Haul Air Mobility for All (ASHA) organised by CII (Confederation of Indian Industry).
“Earlier we had aircraft with no passengers and today we have a bevy of passengers but a shortage of aircraft,” Scindia said.
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Scindia also appealed to aircraft manufacturers for faster deliveries of planes.
He said, “We need more aircraft, and we need them quickly as India has an insatiable desire to travel by air today. This revolution has come.”
He said India will become the largest civil aviation market in the next decade as it has crossed the pre-COVID number of air travellers by 10% to reach 4,55,000 passengers daily, with airlines now operating at 80-90% load factor.
“In that period of change and dynamic flux, the civil aviation sector is making unimaginable strides as never before”, he said.
{{/usCountry}}“In that period of change and dynamic flux, the civil aviation sector is making unimaginable strides as never before”, he said.
{{/usCountry}}Speaking about opportunities in the advanced air mobility (AAM) sector, the minister said the drone market will become a ₹3 lakh crore market by 2030 and it is estimated that the sector will generate employment for around 3-4 lakh people.
“If you look at the railways, on a competitive basis (which means in 1st and 2nd class), it transports 185mn passengers per year and civil aviation transports 144mn passengers but the CAGR of railways is 5.6% and for civil aviation it is 10.3%. Hence in 4-5 years, civil aviation is going to become a bulwark of transportation in India,” Scindia said.
“... the reason I tell you this is because advanced air mobility must have its foundation on the basis of a very strong civil aviation infrastructure network and India today has that capability. And I guarantee you today in our lifetimes, India will become the largest market for aviation in the world within the next decade,” he said.
While stating India was proving itself to be a manufacturing hub in the aerospace sector, Scindia invited global companies to be part of India’s journey.
AAM comprises drones, helicopters, e-VTOL (electric, vertical take-off and landing systems) and other air-systems used for ferrying people and goods over short distances.
Talking about helicopters for last mile connectivity, Scindia said, “Helicopters are unmatched in the ways they can be used for different connectivity roles. They can be used for urban connectivity to provide intra-city and inter-city means of swift proximate travel and this is being tried in Mumbai and Bangalore…”
“Three helicopter corridors from Mumbai-Pune, Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar, and Shamshabad-Begumpet have been created and new IFR corridors are being planned… Working with the road transport and highways ministry, we have been able to allot helipad spaces from the design stage for all future expressways and major highways so that it can be used to evacuate accident victims,” Scindia added.
Talking about electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, Scindia said eVTOLs will soon be a reality in a field where the ministry and industry captains are working together at great lengths.
“The future is electric, this is evident both in the way the markets are moving as well as the increasingly intelligent consumer choices being made by Indians to promote the government’s aims of sustainability and cleanliness,” he said.
Salil Gupte, president, Boeing India and chairman, CII National Committee, said, AAM can do to India’s transport what telephony did to its communications.
“In telecom, India skipped stages where the rest of the world was stuck. We have seen India leapfrog from landline to mobile to 4G to 5G roll-outs at lightning speed. India can do the same in transport if it chooses to embrace the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) technologies and create the right ecosystem for it,” Gupte said.
“An average Indian traveller spends a substantially higher time commuting compared for short-haul travel his counterpart in other Asian cities and other global cities. Technologies that we are discussing... drones, helicopters, e-VTOL have the opportunity to reduce this drastically and India can leapfrog in urban mobility. India is good at that. That is exactly what has happened through telephony in the last 25 years” Gupte said.
“The take-off of AAM will need a robust ecosystem that includes vehicles, training and education, research and development, landing structure, fleet-management, demand management, linkages with other mobility system,” Kamal Bali, President and MD Volvo Group in India, and chairman, CII Southern Region said.
“For the industry, it will mean a huge new value chain, new economic clusters and many new jobs,” he concluded.