Aviation Sector in India India is one of the fastest growing | UPSC Mains 2023 Materials
Aviation Sector in India
India is one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world.
Domestic: Its domestic traffic makes up 69% of the total airline traffic in South Asia.
Capacity: India’s airport capacity is expected to handle 1 billion trips annually by 2023.
Responsible Ministry: The Ministry of Civil Aviation is responsible for formulating national aviation policies and programmes.
Airports Authority of India (AAI): It is responsible for creating, upgrading, maintaining and managing civil aviation infrastructure in the country.
As on June 23, 2020, it operates and manages 137 airports in the country.
AAI has leased out eight of its airports through Public Private Partnership (PPP) for operation, management and development on a long term lease basis.
Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS-UDAN): The top 15 airports in the country account for about 83% of the total passenger traffic.
These airports are also close to their saturation limit, and hence the Ministry notes that there is a need to add more Tier-II and Tier-III cities to the aviation network.
The Regional Connectivity Scheme was introduced in 2016 to stimulate regional air connectivity and make air travel affordable to the masses.
The budget for this scheme is Rs 4,500 crore over five years from 2016-17 to 2021-22.
As of December 16, 2021, 46% of this amount has been released. In 2022-23, the scheme has been allocated Rs 601 crore, which is 60% lower than the revised estimates of 2021-22 (Rs 994 crore).
