Hyderabad: India's civil aviation minister urged Indian airlines on Friday to add more long-haul aircraft to their fleets and to increase flights abroad, as air travel rebounds from a two-year slump due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Domestic passenger numbers are expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels within one year, Jyotiraditya Scindia said during an air show in the Indian city of Hyderabad.
But foreign carriers dominate international routes to and from India, which industry experts say is partly because Indian carriers do not have enough widebody, long-haul planes.
"Along with our thrust on narrow body aircraft, we must also increase our fleet of wide body aircraft. It is not enough to connect all points in India, we need to connect the world to India," the minister said.
India's aviation market is dominated by narrowbody planes operated by low-cost carriers like IndiGo. In 2019, Indian airlines operated more than 550 narrowbody planes and less than 60 widebodies.
Only two Indian airlines fly to long-haul destinations - Air India, the former state-run carrier acquired by Tata Group, and Vistara, a venture between Singapore Airlines and Tata.
Middle Eastern, European and other carriers take the bulk of passengers from India leaving domestic airlines with a small share of the international market.
This is partly because Indian carriers do not have enough widebody planes to compete, Remi Maillard, president and managing director at Airbus for India and South Asia, said at the air show, making a pitch for the Airbus A350 long-haul jet.
Maillard said he expected-long haul travel from India to grow "massively" in the next decade which would drive demand for bigger planes.
The European planemaker projected India would need 2,210 new planes to meet growing air travel demand over the next two decades, with widebody planes accounting for 440 of them.
Airbus' rival Boeing Co now dominates the widebody market in India.
Akasa's first commercial flight in June
New Indian budget airline Akasa Air plans to launch its first commercial flight in June and is working to get all relevant licences, Chief Executive Vinay Dube said on Friday.
The airline is backed by billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, known as "India's Warren Buffett", who has teamed up with former chief executives of IndiGo and Jet Airways to tap into rising long-term prospects for domestic air travel in India.
The airline aims to have 18 aircraft within 12 months from launch and will have 72 planes in five years, Dube said speaking at an air show in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.
The carrier will fly within India. Dube did not say which cities it would serve. In November last year, Akasa Air, which will compete with other Indian airlines like IndiGo and SpiceJet, placed an order for 72 Boeing737 MAX jets, valued at nearly $9 billion at list prices. Akasa Air received initial clearance from India's civil aviation ministry to start operations in October last year.
