20.2.19

India will have 1.1 billion flyers by 2040

By the year 2040, India will have an estimated 1.1 billion airline passengers, of which 837 million will be domestic passengers, said a report released by global aviation consultancy firm, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.

To put that in perspective, UN projections estimate that India will have a population of 1.73 billion by 2050. In FY 2018, India with a population of about 1.32 billion had 184 million air passengers (including domestic and international). Twenty years ago, in FY 1998, when India’s population had reached a billion mark, it had only 22 million air passengers.

The 20-year CAPA growth forecast report on the Indian civil aviation industry said that “apart from Bollywood and cricket, aviation is perhaps the only other sector which can contribute to build “Brand India” at a global scale. For, by 2040, India will have an estimated fleet of 3,342 aircraft, with 2,333 aircraft deployed on the domestic routes.

The CAPA report gave an indicative list of the future air routes from/to India. While today a number of flights to the US transit through the Middle East, in the next 20 years, traffic densities and better economics allow for non-stop routes. Among the non-stop routes listed were Ahmedabad-Nairobi, Delhi-Brisbane, Delhi-Auckland, Goa-London, Kochi-London, Chennai-Chicago, Chennai-San Francisco, Bangalore-New York. In terms of investments, Indian aviation industry has attracted cumulative investment of USD 48 billion in last 15 years and by 2040, it could attract an additional USD 250 billion.

“The industry’s economic impact is estimated to have increased from less than 1% of GDP in 2003 to almost 7% of GDP in 2018. It is projected to increase to almost 9% of GDP, or USD 1.1 trillion by 2040,’’ said the CAPA report.

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