Big business to advise Scindia on aviation
The Ministry of Civil Aviation has constituted three advisory groups chaired by the minister Jyotiraditya Scindia with representatives of airline, airport and maintenance, cargo and ground handling companies as members. The groups will advise the government on ways to improve the industry's operations.
Besides the ministers of civil aviation and top officials, the group on airlines will have industry representatives, including Rajiv Bansal, CMD, Air India, Rahul Bhatia, chairman, Indigo, Ajay Singh, chairman, SpiceJet, Ness Wadia, director, Go Air, Bhaskar Bhatt, chairman, Vistara, Sunil Bhaskaran, CEO, Air Asia and CEO of Alliance Air, said a government order.
Aviation being one of the worst-hit sectors by the pandemic, airline companies are likely to report a consolidated loss of about $4.1 billion in the current financial year
(FY22), similar to the losses clocked in FY21, as per reports. According to researcher Icra, the aviation industry will need additional funding of Rs
35,000- Rs 37,000 crore till
FY23 to stay afloat.
The group will look into safeguarding viability of airlines, aircraft and component manufacturing, regulatory issues, enhancing domestic and international connectivity, promotion of passenger and cargo services, passenger facilities during air travel and manpower skilling.
The industry representatives in the group for airports include G. B. S. Raju, business chairman, GMR Group, Jeet Adani, vice president, Adani Group and Hari K. Marar, MD and CEO, Bangalore International Airport.
This group will advise the Centre on enhancing the airport capacity, infrastructure augmentation and modernisation, passenger facilities at airports, customer experience, Airport Service Quality rating and similar international benchmark ratings, manpower skilling, tariff and other regulatory issues and capex performance of airports.
The third group will address the issues concerning maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO), cargo, flight training organisation (FTO) and ground-handling.
Bharat Malkani of Max Aerospace, Ashok Gopinath
of GMR Aero Ground Handling, Ramanathan Rajamani, CEO, AISATS, Ram Babu, CEO, AIATS, Pawan Dhoot, MD, Dhoot Group and G.V.S. Reddy, chairman, APAO, are among the industry representatives in this group.
They will evolve strategies to ensure growth of the sectors, create a congenial ecosystem by suggesting regulatory, policy improvements and measures for better efficiency and growth, suggest measures for infrastructure improvement and capacity building as well as incentivising domestic air cargo sector and suggest measures to create a levelplaying field for airlines to ensure best services at competitive prices.
The groups may also take advice from other experts, if necessary. Experts suggest that the groups should be diversified to include voices of consumers, other businesses and those related to tourism, besides environment groups.
Arvind Singhal, CMD of Technopak Advisors, however, argues that "there is no association per se to represent aviation consumers" in India. But he says frequent fliers and those from the tourism sector can be roped in to "speak on behalf of the customer and seek more competition in the sector."
Scindia had taken charge as the minister of civil aviation this month. His father, Madhavrao Scindhia too held the same ministry in the Narasimha Rao government between 1991 and 1993.