Heading For Trouble

The Government’s Plan to Revive Airports and Subsidise Fares, to Take Flying to the Masses, Is Riddled With Problems.

- Manu Kaushik

The big, pale blue entrance gate of Ludhiana airport remains shut for most part of the day. It opens only when the airport staff comes to work or leaves in the evening. There’s hardly been any passenger movement over the last 30 months since Air India closed operations here. Once in a while, people come to board private chartered flights.

Punjab Police personnel at the gate could barely write. When this was pointed out, the Director, A.N. Sharma, said the security staff will shortly undergo training in aviation safety that will prepare them for challenges after the airport starts functioning again from July-end, when it will kick off with scheduled flights from Alliance Air and Deccan Charters, thanks to the recent government push to regional air connectivity. In June 2016, the government had come out with a civil aviation policy that laid emphasis on making flying more affordable. Then, in April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) Scheme that caps fares on regional routes at ₹2,500 for half the seats in flights with duration of up to one hour. In the first phase of UDAN, five airlines have bid for 128 routes covering 70 airports, including 45 underserved/ unserved ones. Besides this, the government intends to spend ₹50-100 crore on each of these airports, a large number of which are undergoing last-minute fixes.

However, experts say fare subsidies and capital expenditure alone cannot ensure long-term sustainability of these airports. The biggest lifeline of an airport is passenger demand and airport traffic in India is skewed towards the metros and tourist destinations. Six airports – Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata – account for over 70 per cent of domestic traffic.

The Demand Conundrum