A rapid expansion in India’s air traffic, especially the growth in regional connectivity, is leading industry regulators to ramp up infrastructure. The aviation safety body the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has announced the induction of additional personnel and doubling the number of its offices across the country, including two offices in the Northeast.
“To keep pace with growth in aviation, and remain in alignment with our goals, restructuring of BCAS was a dire need. The same was confirmed after a detailed bottom-up analysis,” Zulfiquar Hasan, Director General BCAS has said.
BCAS which celebrated the 38th year of its founding on April 1, has already obtained the Ministry of Finance clearance for 122 operational posts in place of ministerial posts surrendered earlier by the agency.
It will also be foraying into 17 new towns, which will be in addition to its 20 existing regional offices. These include four regional offices in Itanagar, Noida, Chandigarh, and Goa, and 13 sub-regional offices in Navi Mumbai, Jammu, Nagpur, Vijayawada, Jodhpur, Rajkot, Hubballi, Trichy, Bagdogra, Port Blair, Varanasi, Dibrugarh and Agatti.
“There are now so many flights to smaller towns that it’s difficult to go there daily. With the Ministry of Finance approval now coming in, we will be recruiting over the next couple of months,” informed Hasan.
Post the COVID-19 pandemic, India has emerged as the world’s fastest-growing aviation market. Domestic carriers flew over 25.78 million passengers in January-February compared to over 24.62 million passengers during the corresponding period last year, clocking an annual growth of 4.74 percent and monthly growth of 4.80 percent, according to aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) data.
This includes more than 13.39 million passengers who have utilised nearly 300,000 subsidised flights operated under the Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) or ‘everyone can fly’ scheme launched by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) since 2016.
Tackling Challenges
Every day, more than 8,000 flights land in 150 airports located across the country. MoCA estimates the number of airline passengers on domestic routes to exceed 300 million per annum by 2030. However, this record growth in passenger traffic is not without its share of challenges for agencies like BCAS that need to move proactively to keep pace.
“Congestion in airports is unwelcome. It inconveniences passengers and crowds become an attractive target for anti-national elements… Congestion in the air due to bad weather causes severe inconvenience to passengers as we saw happening recently in December,” Hasan said surmising the situation.
Therefore, in addition to increasing the number of offices to 47 and enlisting additional staff, BCAS is also looking to encourage the rollout of solutions such as full body scanners as well as initiating new disembarkation procedures in case of flight delays.
Meanwhile, the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the body responsible for creating, upgrading, maintaining, and managing civil aviation infrastructure, is examining a proposal to centralise air operations under the Indian Single Sky Harmonised (ISHAN) Air Traffic Management (ATM) system from Nagpur.
The proposal seeks to make flying safer by unifying the Flight Information Region (FIR)s of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, and the sub-FIR region of Guwahati as well as substantially cutting down on the Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) consumption as part of the country’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.
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With an eye on making flying sustainable, MoCA has already been working to make the country’s aviation assets carbon-neutral.
“Out of our 157 airports, nearly 70 airports have become environment friendly. By the end of 2024, our 115 airports will be 100 percent environment friendly,” Jyotiraditya Scindia, Union Minister for Civil Aviation promised recently.
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