No proposal to cap ticket prices: Sinha
As airline ticket prices look poised to so arin the festive season after imposition of customs duty on aviation turbine fuel, Union minister Jay ant Sin has aid the government wouldn’ t intervene in setting a higher price or changing the pricing mechanism .“There is no such proposal for cap ping on prices .” Sin has aid there was a lack of captains tom anthe aircraft s designed for the government’ s ambitious regional connectivity scheme, known as UDAN. The problem stems from the fact that most of the pilots have licence st of ly larger aircrafts such as the Air bus 320, while the licence needed for smaller air crafts such as AT Rs still needs to be obtained. Flyers need to spend specific time on a particular aircraft variant to be eligible to command and fly it. “For certain types of aircrafts we have short ages ,” Sin has aid. However, he said ~1,000 billion of investment was in the pipeline for the airports to improve air traffic management, capacity and infrastructure. Under the N av ni rm an initiative, designed for a 15-20 year time frame, aircraft operators are expected to complete a billion trips every year from the current level of 220 million trips a year. Asked about a second airport in Kolkata, Sin has aid air traffic to the city was poised to grow significantly in the coming days and the government “will have to add significant capacity ”. Either a second airport on this metropolis’ fringes or enhancing the capacity in the NS CB Airport is being worked out.