Marrying art with utility

It gives me great pleasure indeed to present the Indian Regional Focus in International Airport Review. At the outset, I would like to compliment IAR for the yeoman service they are rendering to the Global Aviation fraternity by keeping us up to date with developments the world over.

A decade and a half after the open sky policy was launched in India, it catapulted into a globalisation era and the aviation fraternity of India at large is trying to come to terms with the situation. As a result of the phenomenal and unprecedented surge experienced in the aviation sector in the last decade, Airports Authority of India (AAI) has taken on numerous development works at almost 50 airports in the country and it will be appreciated that the venture embarked upon by AAI requires huge sums of money, which was envisaged to be catered from in-house sources.

The past year has indeed been the most turbulent period in the annals of AAI history, due to the global economic meltdown. This meltdown in turn was the basic cause of the germination of the tense economic situation the world over and in particular the financial market, which has had a strong influence on development activities. As a corollary of the scenario so developed, the air traffic growth and revenue receipts worldwide have been adversely affected.

As has been well established, airports are the gateway to any prospering country and thus their development is inescapable, for it not only contributes towards the overall development of the country but is also bound to play a pivotal role in reviving the economy. Hence, airport infrastructure development is critical for the aviation industry and in turn for the overall economic growth of the country.

Infrastructure is the back-bone of a country and as such is the prime mover of the economy. Sustainable and equitable development of the infrastructure helps in the creation of jobs and resources that improve the standard of living for people. The importance of infrastructure cannot be emphasised enough. Arranging funds for the execution of smooth and uninterrupted development programmes undoubtedly poses the biggest challenge.

Whilst I speak on behalf of the airport operators, I think it would be prudent for me to touch upon the difficulties that airline operators are facing with regard to the aeronautical charges being levied at the airports.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind our worthy clients that airports need to continue to invest in infrastructure. Existing facilities need to be updated in order to meet new standards, and new facilities need to be built in order to meet future demand. Accordingly, capital investment programmes remain very important items on the airport’s balance sheet and constitute a significant portion of the airport cost. Aeronautical revenue collected from the airline operators only partially covers the cost of operation, let alone the cost of capital.

Thankfully, the ever-growing non-aeronautical income takes pressure off of the need to raise user charges and cushions the negative impact in the present situation. I can assure them that the airport industry puts in every effort to save costs in order to keep user charges to a minimum. Continued dialogue between all industry stakeholders is vital in order for us to master this crisis successfully and to ensure that the aviation industry remains strong and viable in the future.

Good infrastructure is the sine qua non in this day and age. If the ancient civilisations are famous for their art and architecture, the present day civilisation will leave its stamp on the sands of time with infrastructure that marries art with utility.