Government aims for six twin city airports by 2030, over 30 by 2047
Port Blair Airport
By Sanjay Singh
New Delhi, October 11: The Centre is working on an ambitious plan to develop six twin city airports across India by 2030 as India aims to bolster its aviation infrastructure and to decongest the existing major city airports.
According to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA), Twin City airports are a unique concept where two airports serve neighboring cities or closely located in urban cities. The plan in the long term is to go beyond six such Twin City airports by 2030 to 15 by 2040, over 30 by year 2047.
This proposal has been shared with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Airports Authority of India (AAI) and a steering committee on greenfield airports headed by the Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation for evaluation and executing the plan.
The concept of Twin City airport development plan has already been initiated in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Goa. In Delhi-NCR, the Noida International Airport in Uttar Pradesh will complement the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in Delhi, while in Mumbai, the upcoming Navi Mumbai International Airport will complement the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. For Goa, the recently opened Manohar International Airport at Mopa will be an add on to the old Dabolim airport in Goa.
The government has also under the GFA policy, has accorded ‘In-Principle’ approval for setting up of 21 Greenfield Airports. The expected improvement in passenger traffic and also a fast-paced recovery in domestic passenger traffic is expected in FY23 aided by improving demand in both leisure and business travel segments. This is attributable to the receding infection level and consequent normalcy in the operating environment. With the waning effect of the pandemic, domestic passenger traffic is expected to witness year-on-year growth of 52-54% in FY23.
Post Covid with the recovery in domestic passenger traffic to pre-Covid levels by FY24 and further, with the resumption of scheduled international air operations for Indian carriers since March 27, 2022, and the reversion to bilaterally agreed capacity entitlements, the international passenger traffic for Indian carriers is on a strong growth trajectory (YoY growth of 4.03 times in Q1 FY23) due to pent up demand and is expected to reach or marginally surpass pre-Covid levels in FY23.
About The Author
