The Hindu Business Line : A new flight path

The regional-airline move and the plan to revive unused airstrips will provide better connectivity to the country’s intra-region travellers, especially in the North-East.

For decades, air travel was best described by two adjectives: elitist and urban. Then low-cost, no-frills airlines came along to bring the middle-class into the fold; passenger traffic has virtually trebled in just six years to over 116 million in 2007-08, making India the ninth largest aviation market in the world. Now it is heartening to see that air travel promises to become available beyond the urban boundaries with the Airports Authority of India seeking consultants t o study how airstrips currently not in civilian use can be either revived or mainstreamed. There are 327 such airstrips all over the country, including those used by the Air Force, and the expectation is that even if some of them can be used again for civilian traffic, the new official thrust on encouraging regional air links will deliver results faster.

In fact, this move has to be seen in conjunction with the new policy on regional airlines, announced last August, meant to provide better air services to non-metro towns. A new category of permits for domestic airlines has been created which will allow an airline company to fly to all regional airports except the metro airports of regions other than the one where it is located. Clearly, such a policy can have a fair chance of success only if there are a sufficient number of airstrips that the new regional airlines can connect to. While the Airports Authority is right in examining the feasibility of reviving unused airstrips, it would do well not to restrict itself to existing ones because they are there; it should not ignore other locations that have the traffic potential and the space. Both the regional-airline move and the effort to open up new airstrips should help the large number of potential air passengers in small towns who are currently forced to use other modes of transport because of the paucity of air services. In fact, three specific reasons have been cited for the present plight of these potential passengers — low traffic, limited investments and the absence of interest on the part of airline operators to fly to such places (which is actually an offshoot of the low-traffic constraint). It is hoped that the new policy on regional airlines will offer adequate facilities that will make specialisation in flying such routes investment-worthy.

This is a time of churning as far as national civil aviation policy is concerned. If fares are kept at a reasonable level, the demand for air services generally promises to be practically limitless. As the Union Civil Aviation Minister, Mr Praful Patel, has said, more infrastructure is needed, without which “our growth in civil aviation will not be able to sustain itself”. This, in turn, would be unfortunate for the long-term growth prospects of the economy.

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