- India
- International
The current global banking crisis is unlikely to have any impact on the demand for the aviation sector, which has seen good revival post pandemic, Boeing India President Salil Gupte said.
“It is too early to know what the consequences of the bank situation in the US and Europe and other places are going to be. At this stage, we really see no slowdown in the demand for aviation,” Gupte said, while replying to a query on whether the current financial crisis will play a spoilsport in the growth of the aviation sector.
He said the sector has stunned the world in terms of how quickly it has recovered from the pandemic.
After seeing a considerable decline of 54 per cent in air-traffic as well as a 66 percent drop in passenger traffic handled during FY21, the domestic aviation sector saw recovery in FY22 due to rising demand from the middle class, growth in population and tourism, higher disposable incomes and greater penetration of aviation infrastructure.
The total number of passengers carried in December 2022 stood at 150.1 lakh, which was 106.4 per cent of the pre-Covid level (average for 11 months from April 2019 to February 2020), the Economic Survey 2022-23 said.
In November 2022, total air cargo tonnage stood at 2.5 lakh MT, which was 89 per cent of the pre-Covid levels.
Gupte said the South-Asia region, including India, will remain the fastest growing aviation market in the world for several years. He was speaking at an event organised by CII.
According to him, to sustain higher growth, India needs to focus on hard infrastructure such as airports and also on people infrastructure such as pilots and mechanics.
It could be noted that Tata Group-owned Air India had last month placed an order of 470 aircrafts, which included 250 from Airbus and 220 from Boeing.
Gupte said the country is going to need over 31,000 pilots and 26,000 mechanics over the next 20 years to take care of the aircrafts that are coming in.