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Call to spruce up India's aviation infrastructure
by Ameen Syed

     Mumbai: As the Indian aviation sector continues to register an accelerated growth, industry leaders and analysts have said that aviation infrastructure needs to be spruced up to sustain itself in a fast-growing aviation market. India, which has witnessed several private carriers start operations in the past year, is expecting a never before increase in passenger traffic. State-owned Indian Airlines, which for decades was a monopoly provider of domestic air services, has been facing tough competition from private players like Jet Airlines, Air Sahara, Air Deccan and Spice Jet. Global interest in the Indian aviation industry is strong as local air travel demand is expected to rise nearly nine per cent annually for the next 20 years.

     However, the word of caution comes from the industry bigwigs who say that the present infrastructure which is both obsolete and inadequate, cannot cope up with the present volume of air traffic and the situation, therefore, doesn't augur well for the industry's future. "The infrastructure we have here is insufficient for the current volume of traffic and the aircrafts we have in the country. And if you look forward at the growth which we expect, it's clearly insufficient. I would say that lack of adequate infrastructure is the single biggest problem we may face in further developing the air traffic in India," said Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, CEO of Jet Airways, a leading private airline. Given the current constraint of limited parking space at airports and long queue for landing and taking off during pick hours, low- cost carriers which operate on quick turnarounds are finding it difficult to maintain their punctuality. "We have to build new airports, we have to make buildings. The amount of spaces that we are adding, say at Santa Cruz airport, also is not going to be sufficient. It's just for few years . You see it... if a few flights get delayed, what a chaos it is," said well known architect Hafeez Contractor, who designed the Mumbai terminal. Government, on the other hand, say that there are plans on the anvil to upgrade the existing infrastructure.

     The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), a statutory authority and regulator for the industry, would be strengthened and given more powers to carry out operations in order to make the sector world-class, said Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel. "There are changing needs, evolving needs, so we have a commmitee to see what are the requirements. We'll compare the regulatory framework in other countries, and integrate all those best practices and make DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) much stronger body. That is what have to do in the shortest possible time because the growth is also there," said Patel. Patel added that the government had plans to upgrade 35 non- metropolitan airports of the country in a time-bound fashion. Asia's third largest economy has seen a flurry of airline launches as several leading business houses have entered the sector. Discount carriers are also luring travellers with cheap tickets. Several new airlines such as Air One, East West Airlines, Magic Air, Indus Airways and many more plan to launch in the next two years, encouraged by a government increase of the foreign investment cap for aviation to 49 per cent from 40 per cent last year.
-Oct 24,  2005

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