TBM Staff - Mumbai Aditya Ghosh, Co-founder of Akasa Air and Former Director of IndiGo, said the total number of air passengers in India in a year is about the same number of passengers that the Indian Railways carries in a day.
The co-founder of Akasa Air was speaking on the growth prospect of air travel in the country in a podcast and added, “So if you could magically convert one day’s worth of rail traffic to air, we will need 500 more airplanes in the country.”
Shedding more light on the air travel scenario in the country, he said air travel in India grows at about 2x of GDP growth typically. To maintain the same load factor considering the growth in passenger numbers 75 more airplanes will be needed next year. “Between all the airlines, who have ordered airplanes today, let’s say there are a thousand airplanes, but those are going to come over the next 10 years and many of them will replace the existing fleet. So, for a long long period of time we have this supply constraint market in India where demand is far outstripping the supply,” Ghosh said.
Drawing a comparison between the United States and India, the airline expert highlighted the potential for airlines. The US has over 14,000 airports while India has got something around 150-200 airports after the government’s recent focus on building infrastructure for air travel in the country, he said, adding that this shows the immense potential and the need to double airports in the country.
“India is a 1.4-billion population country with 500 aircraft whereas the US has 330 million people. An airline like the Southwest Airlines, which is not even the US’s largest airline has over 1,000 airplanes. So, if we had to catch up with one airline in the US, we would need to double the aviation industry, he said. (Source: Business Today)
