The Indian Aviation Turbulence
The aviation industry has been a blessing over the past decade in terms of negating the time of travel and becoming accessible for majority of the people in India. Passengers are not hesitant to shell out a bit extra against the train owing to the time it saves. The presence of a large fleet of airline carriers along with accessibility to cities where no one would have thought of having an airport has revolutionized the aviation industry. Flight carriers like Indigo, Vistara, Spice and many more have eased up the accessibility of cities and towns within India. All this would indicate that all is well in the aviation industry and things would only look north with such a service. 2023 and now 2024 spell a different story altogether.
Passengers are disgruntled, airlines are getting show cause notices, flights have made a habit of arriving late at their destinations and finally the entire fleet of aircrafts is potentially facing problems in its design and engines. Let’s explore more on what has happened suddenly to the industry that was sought after by industrialists like Vijay Mallya, Aditya Ghosh, and Late Subrata Roy.
1. Lack of qualified pilot → Public Disgruntlement: The winters have been heavy on Northern India with dense fog engulfing places like Delhi and Chandigarh. This has resulted in delay in flights amounting to frequent disgruntlement among the passengers publicly. Now flights can take off in dense fog unlike trains which have to stop or move slowly. To enable the aircrafts to land or take off, the pilots need to be CAT-III qualified. However, the number of pilots for domestic airlines who are CAT-III qualified are a bare minimum leading to delays and cancellation of flights to and from northern India.
2. Grounding of fleet -> Issue in engines: Back in 2023, the major supplier of engines to narrow size fleet of aircrafts belonging to Indigo and Vistara, Pratt & Whitney claimed to have found issues in their engines which need replacement. This would be a phased approach leading to grounding of aircrafts and delays are further attributed to the pressed supply chain owing to ongoing Israel Hamas conflict ongoing. This has only increased the pressure on the aviation industry leading them to incur heavy losses and even increasing the ticket prices.
3. Increasing Demand -> Duopoly in industry: The demand for travelling via air is increasing by the year and at the same time, the government is constructing new airports by the day. This would indicate hey day for the industry, but the presence of duopoly between Tata and Indigo has led to increased air fares and making a lot of people second guess their choices to travel by air owing to the constant delays which match the travel duration of a train.
The turbulence is set to continue this year in the aviation industry, but there are some steps that government can initiate to mitigate this turbulence. On top of airports, there is a need to increase competition among aircraft carriers to match the demand and enter into MoU with supplier of parts to minimize the grounding of flights. There is also a need for better job security and incentives to allow more qualified pilots to serve the domestic region as well. Till then, let us hope that the turbulence comes to end very soon in 2024.
