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Monday, January 29, 2018

2017-18 Economic Survey Places India as Third Largest Domestic Aviation Market

India is the third largest and the fastest growing domestic aviation market in the world in terms of the number of domestic tickets sold, according to the Economic Survey.

The report said domestic passenger departures grew by 23.5 percent in 2016-17, as compared to 3.3 percent in the US and 10.7 percent in China. In a span of 10 years, from 2007-08 to 2016-17, the domestic passenger traffic rose by a compound annual growth rate of 9.89 percent.

“In 2017-18 (April - September), domestic airlines carried 57.5 million passengers, with a growth rate of 16 per cent over the corresponding previous year period. Scheduled Indian and foreign carriers carried 29.2 million passengers to and from India, and showed a growth rate of 9 per cent in 2017-18 (April - September) over the corresponding previous year period,” it said.


The Economic Survey also listed the 18 new airports that will come up in the country, including those in Mopa in Goa, Navi Mumbai, Shirdi and Sindhudurg in Maharashtra, Bijapur, Gulbarga, Hasan and Shimoga in Karnataka and Kannur in Kerala.

Apart from these, the Government has granted “site clearance” for five greenfield airports: Machiwara in Punjab, Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh, Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, Alwar in Rajasthan and Kothagudem in Telangana.

The Centre allocated Rs 4,500 crore for revival of 50 unserved and underserved airports and airstrips to be completed by December 2018.

However, the survey stated that the “revival of airstrips/airports will be ‘demand driven’, depending upon a firm commitment from airline operators a well as from the state governments.”

The report added that the government's regional connectivity scheme will give a boost to the aviation sector.

"To make flying accessible and affordable for the masses in the regionally important cities, the RCS-UDAN scheme was launched in October 2016. This is a first-of-its-kind scheme globally to stimulate regional connectivity through a market-based mechanism. 27 states/UTs have already signed MoUs with the central government under RCS-UDAN. Many private sector airlines are actively participating under this scheme,” said the survey.

The report also observed that growth in the aviation sector has helped in expanding the country’s tourism sector.

“Outbound tourism has also picked up in recent years, with the number of departures of Indian nationals from the country growing by 7.3 per cent to 21.9 million during 2016, from 20.4 million in 2015,” said the Survey.

“This is more than double the foreign tourist arrivals in India. Domestic tourist visits grew by 12.7 per cent to 1,614 million in 2016 from 1,432 million in 2015,” it added.

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