Project runway

New airlines and more flyers will hit air pockets if India does not ramp up its airports

- K. SUNIL THOMAS

Two decades ago, sitting next to a burger-chomping carpenter going on a vacation on a low-cost flight in the US, Captain G.R. Gopinath had an epiphany—like the carpenter, why can’t ‘everyone’ fly in India as well? It is the ‘eureka’ moment the aviation pioneer credits to his decision to start India’s first low-cost airline, Air Deccan. The rest is chequered history.

Less known is that it was not his only eureka moment. Just before Air Deccan was born, Gopinath had to take a low-cost flight from London which was not flying from Heathrow, but a less known small airport called Luton. “That’s when I realised that London had six airports and all were international!” he said. Luton, the smallest among them, carried roughly the same number of passengers travelling through all of India’s 40 or so airports at that time.

Fast forward to today, India’s air traffic is hovering close to its pre-pandemic high of 14 crore passengers a year. That may sound impressive when you compare it with the 1.3 crore back in 2002. But it is cold comfort when you compare it with some other statistics. Brazil has a population of 21 crore, but its air passenger numbers just before Covid was 10 crore. Malaysia has a population of three crore, and nearly two crore annual air travellers. Ireland’s population is just half a crore, but it sold four crore flight tickets a year before the pandemic. China, which has a population comparable with India, had a high of nearly 66 crore passengers pre-Covid.