Patel sees 25% growth in aviation sector

The government's open sky policy was aimed at sustaining the aviation sector's growth at more than 25 per cent for the next five years, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said today.

Inaugurating Air-India's direct Kolkata-London flight here Patel said there was a move to develop other cities so that the traffic should move out of Delhi and Mumbai. The Kolkata-London flight was part of this move.

"For years Delhi and Mumbai have been focal points for air traffic, but for a country as big as India we cannot allow such things to continue and we need to develop other cities not only for the growth of the aviation sector, but also for an overall economic development," Patel said.

He said both Delhi and Mumbai were now facing capacity constraints and there was urgent need for moving traffic to other centres to ensure the 25 per cent annual compounded growth rate.

Describing the new initiative as part of the government's plan to develop more and more national and international routes, Patel said connectivity between different cities had to be strengthened providing them with the connectivity abroad.

He said the opening up of the aviation sector and growth of private airlines had not only led to a high growth rate due to growing competition in the sector, this had also benefited people, as connectivity had remarkably improved while air fares came down drastically.

The civil aviation minister said the government had introduced the open sky policy to expand the aviation sector as there was enough scope for it.There were a number of cities which had only one flight a day, but in reality the demand was for more and therefore competition had been brought in to fill the gap, he said.

Both national carriers, Indian Airlines (IA) and Air-India (A-I), were in a competitive mode, he said, referring to the decision of the carriers to expand their fleet.

The fleet of both IA and A-I had not been upgraded for over a decade. A-I has decided to acquire 50 Boeing jets at an approximate cost of Rs 30,000 crore and the delivery of the new aircraft would start after the finalisation of the price and would be delivered over the next seven years till 2012.

But to meet the new competitive environment the airline had been taking modern aircraft on dry-lease arrangement. Stating that growth should not remain restricted to some areas only, Patel said connectivity had to be strengthened even in Northeast and countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal.

Speaking about development programmes in West Bengal, Patel said the Centre had undertaken a programme to refurbish the Coochbehar airport, in-operative since the late 80s, in the state.

The Coochbehar airport would be operative by the second quarter next year fulfilling the long-pending demand of the people of north Bengal.

The state government had already projected the area as one of its most prosperous industrial growth centres. With the reopening of Coochbehar airport, industrial resurgence in the area would get a boost.

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, who had been urging the Centre to introduce international flights from Kolkata, expressed happiness at the launch of the new service. There would be six flights a week now from Kolkata to London""three existing flights by British Airways and three direct flights to London from Kolkata by Air-India, he said.

Bhattacharjee conceded that at least this time the Centre had done something for the region. He also urged the civil aviation minister to ensure flights to Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo and Guanzhuo in pursuance of the Prime Minister's "look east" policy.

The chief minister also called for flights to Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia along with China and Japan on a priority basis, since a large number of investors from these countries were now showing interest in investment in the region.