Space Jam

Air traffic is growing at 25 per cent, adding 22 million flyers a year. But infrastructure creation is crawling, rendering flying in India a nightmare.

Flying during peak hours increasingly resembles a ticket to hell. Around mid-April, Rakesh Singh, senior executive with a top Indian MNC, missed his interview in Delhi for a plump Manhattan position because his Jet Airways flight from Mumbai was diverted to Jaipur. The aircraft had exhausted nearly all its fuel as it was first held up on the tarmac in Mumbai for two hours before take-off and then encircled the airspace above Delhi for 30 minutes waiting for a slot to land. Singh never made it to the interview but his frustration knew no bounds when he learnt that another candidate, travelling overnight by Rajdhani Express, had bagged the job.

LEFT FUMING

"To overcome the lack of infrastructure in India, we are setting up our maintenance centre at Brussels." NARESH GOYAL, CHAIRMAN, JET AIRWAYS "There has been no increment in capacity efficiencies over the last two years at Delhi and Mumbai airports." G.R. GOPINATH, MD, AIR DECCAN

These aren’t bizarre incidents. Seventy per cent of the flights that take off or land in Delhi and Mumbai are delayed. Average delays run into 35-40 minutes. Tyre bursts, skids and random mishaps strike with alarming regularity and set in longer delays as airports are unable to defuse crisis swiftly. On April 9, for instance, 13,000 passengers booked for 100 flights were delayed by one to three hours in Delhi because the main runway was blocked by an immobilised Air-India aircraft.

In India, air travel is losing its USP—saving time. The spurt in new airlines has triggered an exponential growth in the number of flyers and choked the severely stretched aviation infrastructure. Last year, 90.4 million people in India flew—22 million more than in 2005. What’s more, 112.1 million people are expected to board flights this year. The number of domestic airlines has doubled to 12 since 2004. Competition among them for a larger slice of the market has sparked fierce price wars. Daily 1.63 lakh seats are up for grabs for as little as Rs 5,000 per seat. The average Delhi-Mumbai fare has plummeted from Rs 6,500 to Rs 2,200 since 2005. Lured by affordable fares, people are eschewing trains to hop on to flights. To seat the ever-growing flock, domestic airlines now have 321 planes compared to 248 last year. The fleet will swell to 695 by 2012.

INTERVIEW | PRAFUL PATEL

“No quick-fix solution” Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel feels demand pressure will hasten infrastructure creation. Q. Until when will air travel be such a pain? A. Changes won’t be visible overnight. This is the pain of growth which has no quick-fix solution. I could have gone the China way and waited for infrastructure to come up before allowing demand to explode. I have done the opposite. That will increase pressure for the infrastructure to be put into place. Q. Why is there still no regulator for redressing passenger woes? A. The regulator got delayed a bit because of differences in the group of ministers. It is awaiting Cabinet nod after which a bill to set it up will be introduced in Parliament. Q. What improvements have been made in the past two years? A. The emigration process in Mumbai is the best in the world after I put 20 more counters. A total of 400 air traffic controllers (ATCs) have been appointed in the past two years. We are in talks with Federal Aviation Administration to upgrade the ATC training school in Allahabad. Q. Why have so many airlines been allowed to operate when the infrastructure is so strained? A. Peak-hour delays for two years is not a valid complaint. A little difficulty cannot be the reason to stop airlines. The silver lining is that a new class of people is flying. Should they be deprived? Q. Why has the number of flights to and from Delhi been reduced to 30 per hour? A. That number excludes private and defence aircraft. In two years, private aircraft landings and take-offs have risen from 135 to 200 per day. Non-scheduled flights have gone up to 10 per cent of total traffic. Q. Why don’t you auction slots? A. We will not auction slots. I am trying to accommodate every body. Airlines can’t get peak time slots at Delhi and Mumbai all the time. The ones that have been operating for 15 years naturally have more slots than the two-year-old airlines. Q. Why aren’t airports in smaller cities being developed fast to ease Delhi and Mumbai? A. Pace of smaller airports is fine. I am keen to redistribute traffic to them. How can Delhi and Mumbai bear 75 per cent of all traffic? Q. Can the airports bear the traffic pressure after upgradation? A. The only solution is multiple airports. As state governments are constrained, I want private and merchant airports. Q. When will the second airport in Mumbai be ready? A. There is a restriction on a second international airport coming up within 150 km radius of an existing one. Domestic airports can be built. Navi Mumbai airport will be ready in five years.

Minister for civil aviation Praful Patel may have perceived the deficit in infrastructure in advance but he chose to open up first. In his sequence of things, demand precedes policy push. “I have allowed the demand to be built first. That will increase the pressure for the infrastructure,” he says. As a result, there is no well-thought-out plan in place for bridging the gap between the speed at which the demand for aviation infrastructure is growing and the pace at which the supply is to be augmented. Patel stepped up the pace a year ago when he handed over the Delhi and Mumbai airports to private players for upgradation to world-class standards. But the supersonic growth and inadequate support from the operating environment have rendered the plans ineffectual. “There is hardly any scope for expansion at Mumbai airport. The city needs another airport,” admits Manish Kalghatgi, spokesperson of Mumbai International Airport Ltd. Delhi and Mumbai airports, which are used by 40 per cent of the flyers, are the hardest hit. While each has an annual passenger handling capacity of 14 million, Delhi is handling 23 million flyers annually while Mumbai is catering to 25.5 million passengers.

To ease the pressure in Delhi and Mumbai, Patel had committed Rs 40,000 crore for the upgradation of over 30 small airports in 2005. Amritsar, for instance, can take away a lot of international traffic from Delhi. However, it still has just one baggage conveyor belt though the landing charges there are as high as at the Indira Gandhi International Airport. Domestic airports have a combined handling capacity of only 55 million passengers but 82 million squeeze their way through them every year. Unless augmented at a war footing, they too would degenerate into a sordid mess of bottlenecks and capacity constraints.

TERMINAL SICKNESS   PICTURE SPEAK PEAK-HOUR RUSH: Chaos at the check-in counters at airport Domestic air traffic has so far grown 25 per cent in 2007. Domestic airports have capacity of 55 mn but are handling 82 mn. 70 per cent of the flyers pass through the four metros Delhi handles 23 mn passengers against its capacity of only 14 mn. Mumbai caters to 25.5 mn against a capacity of 14 mn. Chennai bears 10.1 mn passengers compared to its capacity of 7.7 mn. Kolkata handles 6.9 mn compared to its 4.9-mn capacity. AIR POCKET Rickety infrastructure and scramble for market share through predatory pricing and fleet expansion are bleeding airlines despite the boom The airline industry is expected to post Rs 2,500 crore of cash losses in 2006-07. Annual losses of $80 mn due to infrastructure deficit and $500 mn due to ATF costs. These are passed on to flyers by way of a Rs 750 congestion surcharge per ticket. High taxes make ATF 60 per cent costlier in India. Source: Ministry of Civil Aviation, AAI, Federation of Indian Airlines, Delhi Intl Airport, Mumbai Intl Airport, DGCA, KPMG and E&Y

Already shortages and deficits have wrecked the airspace and the ground infrastructure in the metros. Against the requirement of 3,160 pilots, only 2,940 are available. Airlines have got foreign pilots but exposing say Greeks or Irishmen to the thick Jat or Tamil accents of Indian air traffic controllers (ATCs) meant as many as 20 foreign pilots had to be asked to leave by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation last year as they couldn’t cope with the Indian conditions. The crunch on the ground is more acute. The Delhi airport has just 40 toilets for the 42,300 passengers that use it on any given day. The Central Industrial Security Force that handles airport security took three days to respond to a request to spruce up manpower at Mumbai last Diwali. With airlines receiving new planes at the rate of five-six a month, there is a scramble amongst the airlines for the limited flying slots and parking-space. Air Deccan, for example, is forced to maintain parking bases with engineering and maintenance support at eight airports. As the state governments are unable to clean up the runway surroundings, the issue of flight safety could flare up. A six-month-old audit by the International Council of Civil Aviation rates Delhi high on safety standards though. Bird-hits and near mid-air aircraft collisions have been recorded at the rate of over two a month since 2005. In 17 months since its launch, Go Air has already suffered 9-10 bird-hits. Damaged engine blades are replaced at $30,000 (Rs 12 lakh) per piece and reinstating an engine costs $1.5 million (Rs 6 crore).

The cost of the infrastructure crunch to the airline industry is $80 million (Rs 325 crore) a year—a 10-minute delay on the ground costs Rs 8,000 but in air it costs Rs 20,000—which they are extracting from flyers by way of a Rs 750 congestion surcharge per ticket. Patel, however, contends delays and surcharges are a small price to pay for cheap air travel and choice of multiple flights and destinations. “Do you want to have the choice of multiple flights at any given time with peak hour delays or do you want to return to one flight an hour?” he snaps.

Figuring whether planes should precede runways or vice versa is akin to resolving the classic chicken-egg dilemma. Either way, the root of the problem is the glacial pace of policy formulation. Selection of private players for upgradation of Delhi and Mumbai airports in January 2006 is a case in point—it took 25 months of hectic debates among an evaluation committee, an empowered group of ministers, a committee of secretaries and a three-member review panel.

By the time differences across government arms are settled and a decision reached, it is too late. As with the passengers and airlines, the Government too is struggling to catch up. Hopefully, as Patel believes, the demand pressure from passengers will get the government to act in time.

CLOSE SHAVE The high level of overall tension in the operating environment has increased the rate of near mishaps Near mid-air collisions: 48 since 2005 or two every month. Bird hits: 30 or more than two a month at Mumbai alone in 2006. Minor accidents: 40-50 a year due to vehicles hitting aircraft etc. Delhi had 25 delays due to runway blockages since January; six in the last one month itself. CATTLE CLASS Passengers often spend more time on the runway or at airport lounges than actual flying time Delayed take-offs and landings: 70% of the total 520 per day in Delhi whereas 70% of the total 600 per day in Mumbai. Loss of time: Average delay per flight has doubled since 2005 to 35-40 minutes both at the Delhi and Mumbai airports. Smaller airports are also beginning to face delays.

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