Government Aims to Have 220 Airports by 2025

The Government of India has set a target of increasing the number of airports in the country from 140 to 220 by 2025. The Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said in the Lok Sabha that he expected that the revival of the sector scarred by the COVID-19 pandemic, might lead to a substantial jump in passenger traffic. Scindia said that 3.82 lakh passengers had flown daily in the past seven days and the Ministry had set a target of nearly tripling air traffic to 40 crore by 2023-2024. He said that at a time when the global airline industry was facing difficulties, two new airlines, Jet and Akasa, would soon launch their services.

The Minister of Civil Aviation told the House that there were 74 airports in the country till 2014, while 66 new ones had been added in the past seven years. “We have nearly doubled the capacity in seven years. Our resolve is now to take this number up to 220 by 2025,” he said.

The number of planes had been increased from 400 in 2014 to 710 by 2019. Scindia also mentioned that the government had planned to create 33 new domestic cargo terminals, set up 15 new pilot training schools, create more jobs and increase its focus on drones. He said that steps would be taken to simplify the process of granting licenses to pilots using advanced technologies, while flagging off that over 15 per cent of pilots in India are females against the global average of five per cent. “This is another example of women empowerment in the country,” he said.