‘India intends to add 100-120 aircraft every year’

India, the fastest growing civil aviation market in the world, intends to add 100-120 aircraft every year to meet the growing demand, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Friday.

Addressing the Wings India 2022 at Begumpet Airport here, he said India is looking at tremendous expansion in areas of airlines, airports and every facet of the civil aviation eco-system.

He said fleet augmentation is also important for the sector. The country, which had 400 aircraft in 2013-14, has grown its fleet to 710 aircraft in the last seven years. “We added 310 aircraft. We intend to add 100-120 aircraft every year as we go forward,” he said.

Scindia also urged the airlines to increase the fleet of wide-bodied aircraft along with their thrust on narrow-bodied aircraft. “It is not enough to connect all points in India. We need to connect the world to India. Therefore, the Indian flag carriers should increase long-haul aircraft to touch every corner of the world.”

He said the aviation sector has emerged stronger, fitter and is ready to face challenges and opportunities. As India celebrates 75 years of independence and aims to emerge as a new powerful nation in next 25 years, civil aviation has extremely important role to play, he added.

As per Scindia, a multi-pronged approach has been adopted to take the sector to new heights.

“Our penetration is close to only 8 per cent today. In a country of 135 crore people, we have only 14.5 crore travelling by civil aviation. I believe today’s civil aviation is going to be tomorrow’s railways in terms of transport,” he said and assured the stakeholders that his ministry would be a constructive collaborator and not restrictive regulator.

Addressing special emphasis on improving infrastructure, he said that in 2013-14, India had 74 airports but in last seven years, 66 airports have been added, thus taking the total number to 140, including helipads and water aerodromes.”By the year 2024-25, we want to take this number to 220 airports,” he said.

Scindia claimed that airports in India are second to none in the world. Delhi airport has a throughput of 70 million passengers while airports at Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad cater to 25-50 million passengers.