BENGALURU: Over the next five-seven years India will be the thirdbusiest aviation market in the world. Today there are about 3.6 billion aviation trips annually globally. By 2025 it is forecast to touch 8 billion, Satyaki Raghunath, Chief Strategy and Development Officer, BIAL said at an international conference on Future of Aviation and Aerospace, recently organised by IIM-Bengaluru and Toulouse Business School in the city. India will grow from 350 million passenger trips today and we are forecast to have 1.5 billion passenger trips annually by 2030, which is four and half times today’s market, Raghunath added.
Joint Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Amber Dubey said the aviation sector had a lot of potential. “It’s time now for ‘dhando’ (business) and making money. However, at times, it’s better to have flat line growth and profitability rather than a 20 per cent growth and frequent collapses,” he said. One of the challenges the rapidly growing aviation sector in India faces is baseline of the carbon footprint, Manish Raniga, Acting Chief Commercial Officer, South African Airways told TNIE. “India accounts for 1-3 percent of global travel, in terms of the number of aircraft.
With India growing at a rapid pace and looking to doubling the number of aircrafts in the next five years, it is at a disadvantage under CORSIA, because it exceeds the baseline by double. Indian carriers will have to invest in sustainable activity to offset their carbon footprint, as huge penalties will be levied, increasing the cost of operations,” he said. Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) is an international emission mitigation approach for the airline industry and addresses emissions for international air travel that exceed the baseline of 2020 levels.
New model under way to register, track drones
Drones are the next big thing, and efforts for their easy registration is underway, as per the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Amber Dubey. Amber was speaking at the International Conference on Future of Aviation and Aerospace, organised recently by Executive Education Programmes, IIM-Bengaluru and Toulouse Business School in the city. Dubey said a Training, Tracking and Maps (TTM) model is being put in place whereby tactical control systems (TCS) will be tracked, and in collaboration with Survey of India and Map My India, the country will be mapped to define the limits of the zone, and detect any breach by drones. A training module is also being prepared for fliers.
The TTM model will first be implemented in six metro cities and then in 30 state capitals, he told media persons on the sidelines, even as six ministries can override permissions for each stage. Either the drone or the GCS on the ground will be tracked — a sim card fitted in the GCS will be connected to the digital sky server of the ministry that will get constant signals of the latitude and longitude of the person operating the drone that enters a prohibited zone. He said in voluntary disclosure scheme that lasted 18 days till 31 January, as many as 20,000 drones were acknowledged, but checking them is a laborious task.