The aviation minister’s 100-day plan needs an extension

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In September, the minister of civil aviation announced an ambitious 100-day plan, setting infrastructure and policy targets. The plan was to be put up for review by November end, which sadly hasn’t happened yet and there could be reasons. The targets have not been met. Sadly, the 100-day plan had more optics than action on the ground.

The plan talked about 16 points – four related to infrastructure, eight to reforms and four to policy. The 100-day plan was a mix of things already in the pipeline rather than something completely new.

The aim was to inaugurate Kushinagar airport in Uttar Pradesh, lay the foundation stone for Jewar airport near Noida, and inaugurate expanded terminals at Dehradun in Uttarakhand and Agartala in Tripura.

Infrastructure is a long-term project and the current team merely inherited what was planned in the past, though under the same government.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for Jewar airport last month and it is touted to become Asia’s largest about 40 years down the line. Kushinagar airport was inaugurated and commercial services started on November 26, with flights from New Delhi. Dehradun got its new terminal in October, when it was inaugurated by civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.

The new terminal at Agartala is yet to be inaugurated. The airport in the picturesque north-eastern state has faced congestion at both the apron and the terminal. The new terminal should largely solve the issue of passenger congestion and possibly open up opportunities for international flights.

A major focus has been on policy, with the minister having convinced many states to reduce value added tax on aviation turbine fuel. Many states have slashed VAT to 1 percent. VAT ranges from 0 percent to 30 percent at various airports in the country and efforts to bring it in the ambit of the goods and services tax have failed time and again. Fuel is one of the largest costs for any airline in India and accounts about 30 percent of total expenditure.

The drone policy was already out before the 100-day plan was laid out.

On reforms, the plan of eGCA, e-BCAS and upgrading the Air Sewa portal is an on-going process, with the civil aviation ministry’s website now reflecting more statistics that what was the case in the past.

The real challenge, though, is to go beyond the numbers and make structural changes to ensure timely resolution of complaints, be it with the airlines, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

A major focus of the plan was on operationalising five new airports, of which only Sindhudurg (Maharashtra) and Kushinagar have started. Keshod (Gujarat), Deoghar (Jharkhand) and Gondia (Maharashtra) haven’t been operationalised so far.

Fifty new routes were promised, of which flyBig and Star Air would operate eight each, Alliance Air six, and IndiGo and SpiceJet four each.

Gondia is to be connected to Hyderabad and Indore, while Keshod is to be linked to Mumbai. While Gondia has an operational flight training school and Keshod has been granted licence by the DGCA, Deoghar is yet to clear inspections and get a licence to operate.

The ambitious regional connectivity scheme has been in the doldrums since the beginning – first because of the initial lot of airlines not being able to continue operations and later because of airports taking longer than usual to be operationalised.

In addition to this, airlines have pulled out of routes for multiple reasons. While the scheme has to be lauded for getting multiple airports operationalised in a short period of time, a lot is needed to get many more.

The civil aviation ministry has taken up the contentious issue of land acquisition for airports with the states. Scindia has spoken to the chief ministers of over 10 states to take stock of land acquisition, which is the responsibility of the state government. The expansion of airports at Coimbatore, Surat, Vadodara, Ranchi, Bhavnagar and Kandla, among others, has been pending due to delays in land acquisition by the respective states.

At 37 airports in the country, the respective state governments have not acquired even 1 percent of the land required, while at 16 airports, between 30 percent and 99 percent of the projected land needed has been completed. Only at eight airports has all the land required been handed over to the Airports Authority of India for development or expansion.

The aviation sector needs a real hard push and a structural change that goes well beyond the 100-day benchmark.

Things have moved, but may not have moved at the desired pace. In the case of Agartala, the terminal is ready and most likely stuck because of the model code of conduct due to local elections in the state.

Instead of 100-day plans, there is a need for a larger plan that is managed well as a project and not for optics.