[Kishangarh is one of 34 airports opened in the past 18 months in India, whose aviation sector has exploded in the wake of massive economic growth. In September, the civil aviation minister said $60 billion has been budgeted for 100 more in the next 10 to 15 years.]
By
Vidhi Doshi
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Passengers
board a SpiceJet plane in New Delhi in September. The big-name budget
carrier
announced losses recently despite the boom in India’s aviation industry.
(Sajjad
Hussain/AFP/Getty Images)
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KISHANGARH, India — The prime selfie spot for
residents of this central Indian city isn’t its decaying 16th-century royal
fort or its world-famous marble market. It’s the terminal at Kishangarh Airport
— a small, low-slung building that offers a new gateway to the world.
Air travel from the dusty boom town has
become cheaper than renting a car, Devi Singh, a 77-year-old retired soldier
from Kishangarh, told his friends over tea one recent morning, discussing the
$35 no-frills one-way fare to New Delhi that launched last month.
“Even the sweepers can afford to fly now,” he
said.
Kishangarh is one of 34 airports opened in
the past 18 months in India, whose aviation sector has exploded in the wake of
massive economic growth. In September, the civil aviation minister said $60
billion has been budgeted for 100 more in the next 10 to 15 years.
As millions of newly wealthy Indians take to
the skies for the first time each year, the country is scrambling to transform
colonial-era airstrips into plush airports, and suddenly stretched airlines are
investing in new planes and recruiting foreign pilots.
“In the 70 years since independence, just 400
planes were serving us,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said as he unveiled an
airport cut into the Himalayan mountains at Pakyong, in Sikkim state, in
September — his second such opening that month. “In the past year alone,
airline companies have ordered 1,000 new airplanes.”
A relative blip at the turn of the
millennium, India’s aviation market has become a juggernaut. In October, its
airlines marked 48 consecutive months of double-digit growth in traffic,
according to the International Air Transport Association. By 2024, IATA
estimates, India will rank behind only China and the United States in terms of
air traffic to, from and within the country.
“Twenty years ago, India’s market was so
minuscule, it barely even figured in,” said Dinesh Keskar, Boeing’s senior vice
president of sales for Asia-Pacific and India for commercial planes. “In the
near future, we think one in 20 planes will be sold to India.”
The demand for airports is driven, in part,
by new affluence in second- and third-tier cities such as Kishangarh.
In the 1990s, the small, family-run marble
companies here turned into multinational corporations, generating wealth that
lifted the whole population. Even as it retains its sleepy, small-town vibe,
the city draws billionaires’ wives, cricket champions and television stars
looking to decorate homes, temples and malls — and who now arrive for their
marble-shopping visits on chartered private planes or helicopters rather than
by car or train.
Traders anticipate that the new commercial
air connection to Delhi will bring even more customers wanting marble tiles for
walls and floors. A single 78-passenger flight should bring an additional
$400,000 a day in revenue, according to Suresh Tak, president of Kishangarh’s
Marble Association.
Two weeks after the first commercial flight
began, the novelty of the airport was already wearing off for residents and the
possibilities were sinking in.
“What we really need now is a flight to
Mumbai,” said one of Devi Singh’s soldier friends, sipping tea.
“No, we want Kishangarh to Jaipur in 15
minutes,” said another.
Such surging demand should in theory lead to
profits for India’s airlines. In practice, though, the companies are struggling
to cash in because of a combination of surging fuel prices, a weak rupee and
fierce competition that keeps ticket prices low.
“All this talk of India as the third-largest
aviation market may not happen, because the infrastructure may not be able to
come up,” said aviation journalist Neelam Matthews.
In July, share prices of InterGlobe Aviation,
the parent company of India’s biggest airline, IndiGo, plunged 10 percent when
it announced quarterly results showing a 97 percent dip in net profits since
the previous year. SpiceJet, another big-brand budget carrier, announced net
losses of $5 million in its June quarter.
Despite the cash crunch, big airlines are
under government pressure to expand services even on financially risky routes.
In 2017, Modi, eager to promote affordable
aviation as part of a huge package of social improvements, launched the
Regional Connectivity Scheme, which aims to connect small Indian towns to the
aviation map through subsidized new routes.
The program is one element of the prime
minister’s broader infrastructure push — it also includes a $17 billion bullet
train and 53,000 miles of new roads — showcasing India’s gleaming modernity in
a scramble for global superpower status.
But in the aviation sector, at least, those
lofty ambitions have been accompanied — and tempered — by disarray.
Air Deccan and Air Odisha, which collectively
bagged 84 of the 128 contracts offered in the first phase of the new
connectivity program, canceled more than half their flights in September,
according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
Embarrassingly, one of the airports Modi
personally inaugurated in September, in the industrial town of Jharsuguda, had
flights for only two weeks before abruptly halting operations. An official at
the Airports Authority of India, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the flights were
stopped because of internal problems at Air Odisha and would be resumed soon.
Meanwhile, as small towns struggle to set up
new routes, major airports are beset with delays and cancellations.
Mumbai Airport, India’s busiest, reported
delays on one in four of its domestic flights in September, according to the
DGCA. And like New Delhi’s airport, it is running out of landing slots, making
it impossible to add new routes.
For the millions of Indians being initiated
into their country’s new aviation era each year, the experience can be chaotic
and unglamorous. But for Gyana Devi, a 51-year-old schoolteacher flying for the
first time on a wobbly Bombardier jet to her hometown of Kishangarh, it is also
magical.
“I will show everyone at home,” she said as
she filmed a video of her first time above the clouds.
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