Launch of new highways and the semi-high-speed Vande Bharat trains doesn't pose a threat to the growth of the aviation sector in India, civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has said. "As our ability to transport more people with the growth in aircraft fleet increases, we will be offering last-mile connectivity to the hinterland," he said during an exclusive interaction with Business Today.
On April 21, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) launched the fifth bidding round of its flagship UDAN Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), which is perhaps the world’s largest exercise, to expand air connectivity to the remotest areas of the country. Last year, more than one crore passengers had availed of heavily subsidised flights to take to the skies under the programme.
"Many new airports have been built in locations one would have never considered [earlier]. Connectivity from those airports is providing a feeder market from Tier III cities to Tier II and I cities,” averred Scindia.
Notwithstanding the recovery in the country’s aviation sector – currently also the world’s fastest-growing – many feel that upcoming expressways and semi-high-speed train services would give a tough fight to domestic flights.
Scindia’s cabinet colleague and minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari had stated that on certain routes, road travel would be much faster than taking a flight or train. Travel time by road on several popular routes such as Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Dehradun, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Srinagar, Delhi-Katra, Delhi-Amritsar, Chennai-Bengaluru, and Bengaluru-Mysuru would get substantially reduced with the opening of new highways, he had said at a TV Today event in February.
"Before the opening of the Mumbai-Pune highway, there were eight flights operated by [now defunct] Jet Airways on this route. Now, there are none," Gadkari had said.
Similarly, the launch of semi-high-speed Vande Bharat trains by the Indian Railways has provided another option to travellers. Ever since the launch of the first Vande Bharat service in February 2019, 14 trains with a top speed of 180 km per hour have been launched on different routes to date. Unlike in the case of a flight where passengers are required to report a couple of hours ahead of their departure time for the security check and then wait for their checked-in baggage on arrival, they can board Vande Bharat a few minutes prior to departure and proceed on their onward journey as soon as the train reaches the destination.
However, Scindia was of the view that the expansion of airport infrastructure and air services would induce a lot of demand going forward. "Therefore, I see aviation, railways, highways, and waterways complementing and not competing with each other. At the end of the day, the transportation and logistics market in India is going to grow by leaps and bounds," he emphasised.
Scindia also reiterated that passengers carried by airlines will exceed 185 million passengers carried by the Indian Railways in its air-conditioned compartments yearly. "The aviation sector carries about 144 million people. The CAGR of the railways is roughly 5.6 per cent, while the CAGR of aviation is about 10.2 per cent. Therefore, our projection is that in the next five years, we should hopefully be able to catch up with that segment of the Indian Railways," the former Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch investment banker argued.
Domestic airlines carried a record 13 million passengers in March compared to a little over 10 million in the corresponding month last year, an increase of more than 21 per cent, according to data from the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
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