After having a long stint of over 30 years in the most sought after Cadre like IAS and reaching a senior position of Additional Secretary, he has taken the onerous responsibility of steering the country’s most vibrant organization dealing with airport infrastructure that is Airports Authority of India. A brief interview with Mr RK Srivastava, Chairman, Airports Authority of India

Sir, you will agree that civil aviation in general and airports in particular have come out of category of elite class service. Would you like to dwell upon this in the light of emphasis you have laid upon service parameters in your message?

In the first instance, let me also thank you for taking the initiative for this meeting. While I appreciate your concern about the sector, as regards a way forward for AAI to steer up on the map of new growth and height in the field of infrastructure development and safety in the aviation sector, I have given emphasis to customer friendliness in our enabling services at airports and I have deliberated upon pro-active approach in gauging the emerging trends, expectation and demands of different stakeholders in aviation sector in general and passengers, airlines, cargo industry and security in particular.

How has the civil aviation sector been progressing over the past year?

Your question is very straight forward and very specific to the past year. But let me begin with that the civil aviation sector in India started to cater to the needs of big businesses and well healed gentry which is also termed as elite class who needed to travel fast, both within India and abroad, and they wanted their goods and mail to travel equally fast. This scenario, over a period of time, has totally changed. Today civil aviation sector contributes significantly to the process of economic development.

As far as India is concerned, we are the 9th largest aviation market with traffic showing almost double digit growth. The policy initiatives and modernization of both airport as well as ANS infrastructure have propelled Indian aviation sector to a new high growth path. Connectivity has become the Mantra for the overall progress and development, not only for the city where it exists, rather for the adjoining districts and states as well encompassing more and more catchment areas; of-late, airports are being termed as economic magnets. As on date, AAI manages 125 airports including civil enclaves, 60 of them have been recently developed and modernized, thereby provisioning capacity ahead of demand.

Not resting with this, AAI has further evolved itself to undertake development of airports in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. AAI also provides Air Navigation Services across the nation and has taken up ANS upgradation for enhancing safety, efficiency and capacity of the air-space of the country.

Coming back to your question on progress over the past year, to be specific, during the recently concluded financial year 2014-15, Air Traffic at Indian airports has reached to 190 million passengers, 1.60 million aircraft movements and 2.5 million Metric Tonnes of cargo indicating growth of 12.6 per cent in pax, 4.3 per cent in the aircraft movements and 11.0 per cent in cargo over the previous year. Further, during the current financial year from April to September, the growth in passenger traffic has further improved to 17 per cent due to significant growth of 20 per cent in domestic passenger traffic. Growth in aircraft movement has also increased to 8 per cent. This shows scope for rapid development of civil aviation sector in India. With the announcement of draft Civil Aviation Policy, last week, the sector is going to be propelled on the high growth chart.