Flying in and out of Mumbai to get costlier due to scarcity of landing slots
Flying in and out of Mumbai is set to get expensive, because the city’s airport has run out of landing slots, threatening to create a demand-supply mismatch soon with the nation’s airline passenger traffic growing at 20 per cent annually. The Mumbai airport hasn’t allowed addition of any new flights from the summer schedule that began this month, airline executives said. This at a time when carriers announced an 18.6 per cent increase in flights on domestic routes during the summer schedule. With airlines following dynamic pricing, not enough services to meet passenger traffic in Mumbai could drive up the cost of air travel to India’s commercial capital. “Failure to add capacity from the Mumbai airport, which is India’s second largest airport, can badly impact the growth of the sector,” said asenior airline executive, who didn’t want to be named.
Karnataka to rebuild Kalaburgi greenfield Airport
The State government will soon take up the task of completing the much-delayed Kalaburagi green-field airport project. Replying to a debate on the state budget, Siddaramaiah said new tenders will be floated soon to take up the work on the project which has remained suspended for over 3 years now. The CM renewed promise came in the backdrop of his meeting with leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha M Mallikarjun Kharge who sought more funds from the state government for projects in Hyderabad-Karnataka region. Soon after the meeting, Kharge had supported Siddaramaiah’s decision to set up the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) recently. Siddaramaiah also announced take up two other projects including the development of railway line
Aviation flying high with domestic air traffic growth over 20%
The recent data presented by Directorate General of Civil Aviation ( DGCA) shows that February is the fifth consecutive month where domestic passenger traffic grew over 20% on a year-on-year basis. In February, Indian airlines flew 7.4 million passengers as against 6 million passengers in the corresponding month of the last year, indicating a jump of 24.7%. The firm trend in traffic and lower fuel prices are expected to support valuation of aviation stocks in the short and medium term. There are a few factors which have contributed to the growth in passenger traffic. First, airlines have been passing on the benefit of lower crude oil prices to travellers. Second, as rail fares have increased in the recent months, the difference in fares of rail and airlines has narrowed for key routes such as Mumbai-Delhi, Mumbai-Bengaluru, and Mumbai-Chennai. It has been observed that the difference between the fares of rail (AC 2-tier) and air is in the range of Rs 700-800 on these key routes. Due to this, there has been a meaningful migration of travellers from rail to air.