Skift India Daily: India to Invest $12 Billion in Airport Upgrades to Meet Demand
25.08.2023 - 13:58
/ skift.com
/ Amrita Ghosh
/ Jyotiraditya Scindia
/ Air India
India will invest around $12 billion over the next two years in airports, aircraft and recruitment to meet the booming demand for air travel. The country aims to increase the number of airports from the present 148 to 220 by 2025, for which private builders will contribute roughly $9 billion, with the balance coming from the government-run Airports Authority of India. It entails new terminal construction, greenfield projects, and refurbishment of existing buildings, including old military airfields from the colonial era, as per a Bloomberg report. “We need to put in place the civil aviation infrastructure and capabilities that by 2047 would be able to support a $20 trillion economy within India,” said the country’s civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia at the ongoing CAPA India Aviation Summit in New Delhi. Scindia said passenger capacity at India’s six major airports is expected to grow to 420 million in four years from 192 million today, and Indian carriers’ fleet will grow to 2,000 aircraft in five years from 700. Additionally, India has eased leasing rules for airlines to lease more aircraft to address aircraft shortages as travel rebounds from the pandemic. He also highlighted how India had tweaked its airplane leasing program to enable airlines to add more aircraft to meet passenger demand, including more “wet leasing,” or renting of planes with crew, for domestic and international routes. Tata Group-owned Air India last month announced a record order for 470 jets and is due to take another 25 leased aircraft.
India adopted an action plan to mark 2023 as the year of tourism development in the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) region at the tourism ministers’ conference in Varanasi. A joint action plan for implementing the agreement between the member states — China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — on cooperation in the tourism sector was finalized and approved. It comprises promotion of the SCO tourism brand, promotion of the cultural heritage of member states, sharing of information and digital technologies in tourism, and promotion of mutual cooperation in medical and health tourism. The member countries will also undertake activities jointly, such as SCO tourism exhibition, SCO Food Festival, webinars and seminars on tourism, conference and expert sessions on promotion of tourism in the region. The next meeting of the SCO heads of tourism administrations will be held in Kazakhstan in 2024.
Indian airlines will operate 22,907 domestic flights per week as part of this year’s summer schedule— from March 26 to October 28 — representing a 4.4 percent increase from the winter schedule, according to Indian aviation regulator Directorate