Aviation’s SOS to PM: Save the Navi Mumbai airport

Civil Aviation Ministry officials told The Indian Express they were forced to deny permission to airlines from 15 countries in the last one year to start operations or increase frequencies to Mumbai because the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA),with only one runway,is so choked — as reported in the first part of this series — that it does not have any room to accommodate them. These included airlines from Bahrain,Dubai,Qatar,Oman,Singapore,Malaysia and Thailand.

“We may have accommodated some domestic carriers,” said a senior Civil Aviation Ministry official,“but it would not have been at the time of their choice.” Officials said that the only window during which any new slots could be allotted was between midnight and 6 am,a time least favoured by most domestic airlines. It does not excite international airlines much either,as the first few hours after midnight are already packed with international flights. That,aviation analysts say,is a major climbdown for an airport that until recently was India’s main airline gateway to the world .

For long India’s busiest airport in terms of the number of passengers,Mumbai had 532 flight movements per day in 2006 while number two,Delhi,had 403. But in 2008,amid the slowdown which hurt aviation as well,Delhi overtook Mumbai. As per the 2011 summer schedule,airlines want 706 movements in Delhi and 610 in Mumbai.

THE DECLINE,FAST AND STEADY

“The gap is increasing and there’s a difference of 96 movements next year,” said a top official at a private domestic carrier. “Mumbai can handle a maximum of 35 movements an hour today with full capacity available whereas Delhi can handle 50 per hour. All new international flights and new entrants who are not getting slots into Mumbai have chosen New Delhi and are connecting to other destinations with the help of partner carriers.”

The bad news for the city where JRD Tata ended India’s first flight in 1932 gets exacerbated when it is read with forecasts that the economic recovery is also expected to increase passenger demand by 20 percent in key aviation hubs across the country. According to Boeing India,the recovery in the aviation sector in India is expected to be among the fastest in the world.

But,unfortunately,Mumbai airport and by extension,the economy of the financial capital,will not be in much of a position to take advantage of that spike due to CSIA’s limited capacity. “Right now,Mumbai may have 20 million people living in and around the city but they may have to go to Pune to fly,” says Dinesh Keskar,Boeing India’s chief,tongue firmly in cheek.

Nowhere is the irony of the shift from Mumbai to Delhi more stark than in the case of national carrier Air India,for whom Mumbai has been corporate and operational headquarters all along.

With Delhi’s T3 offering everything Mumbai’s CSIA either cannot match or struggles to put together,Air India has grabbed the opportunity to spread its wings and launch new,long-haul international flights to destinations such as Melbourne,Chicago,Toronto,Osaka and Seoul from Delhi from later this year. The planned increases,said an Air India official,would see the national carrier operating 143 international flights per week offering 33,000 seats in each direction on services operating to and from Delhi,an increase of about 50 percent.

Until about three years ago,when Air India and Indian Airlines merged into one carrier and the international operations acquired the new generation medium capacity long-range Boeing 777 aircraft,a majority of Air India’s long-haul international flights originated in Mumbai,with many flying out via Delhi to pick up passengers from the national capital.

In the coming months,passengers from Mumbai wanting to fly Air India to any of its new destinations such as Melbourne,Toronto or Chicago,would have to shuttle it to Delhi on a domestic carrier and then change over.

The story repeats itself at Jet Airways,India’s largest domestic carrier which is also aggressively expanding its international operations. “I have worked at many airports around the world,this is the most congested airport under the sun,” Sudheer Raghavan,Jet’s Chief Commercial Officer,told The Indian Express. “When Mumbai airport is slot-constrained or parking bay-constrained,how does one expand? We are looking at Delhi airport as an option to see if we can operate new flights.”

RIVALS RUSHING IN

While the belated emergence of Delhi as a possible new aviation hub in the country may seem like light at the end of the tunnel,the failure over the years of an overcrowded Mumbai airport to capitalize on its traditional status as the country’s air gateway has been smartly exploited by countries and airlines in the extended neighbourhood,analysts said. They point at the rise of airlines and airports such as Emirates and Etihad out of Dubai,Thai out of Bangkok,Malaysian out of Kuala Lampur and Singapore Airlines out of Singapore,all of whom thrive on Indian passengers who use them to fly to Europe,North America,East Asia and Australia.

“India is surrounded by huge hubs and for airlines such as Emirates and Etihad,India is a huge market,almost like their home market yet their hub is outside the country,” said Andreas Schimm,the Geneva-based Director of Economics at Airports Council International,the premier global airports organization. “They have totally exploited the international business between India and the Middle East and that was only possible because the Indian government let it happen.”

Some analysts even claim that airlines such as Emirates,Singapore Airlines,Thai Airways and Malaysia Airlines,have bought or waiting for deliveries of the super jumbo Airbus A-380 partly on the strength of the Indian market.

An aviation hub takes 10-15 years to develop and Mumbai certainly held that position during the 1980s and even the 1990s until it was slowly allowed to slip away due to a lack of capacity,says Ashwini Kakkar,travel industry veteran and Executive Vice-Chairman of Mercury Travels. “Today,our single biggest hub is outside the country in Dubai and Emirates is getting all our traffic. This is simply shameful.”

THE ALTERNATIVE THAT’S NOT THERE

All of which forces Mumbai’s residents such as Ajit Gulabchand,Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Construction Corporation,which built the Bandra-Worli Sea Link,to question the ongoing debate over the Navi Mumbai airport project damaging the environment. “Will a few hundred acres of mangroves be allowed to hold Mumbai to ransom?” he asks,referring to objections by the Union Environment Ministry to approve the construction of a new airport because it involves clearing about 400 acres of mangroves,among others.

“Does anyone realise how tough it is to find 5,000 acres near a city such as Mumbai to build a new airport? It is absolutely important for the central and state governments to find a compromise and hammer out a solution because Mumbai needed a second airport yesterday and we can only wait one more day. Instead,they are stifling the city which is home to the biggest stock exchange between Tokyo and London,” said Gulabchand.

This is the same argument Maharashtra government officials are expected to place before the Union Environment Ministry when the two sides meet in Delhi on Friday to yet again evaluate the Navi Mumbai project. While the ministry’s Expert Appraisal Committee has asked the state to explore other sites for the project including one in Kalyan in neighbouring Thane district,officials said they would convey that no other location except Navi Mumbai fits the bill.

“The new airport site should be larger than the one in Mumbai and be able to fit the large modern aircraft,” said a senior official from the Urban Development Department,adding that the plot needed to be 6 km long and 3 km wide. “Keeping these technical issues in mind,we found 16 locations in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region of which six were finalised for feasibility studies but it was only the Navi Mumbai site which qualified.”

The 16 sites,the official said,included Rewas-Mandwa in Raigad district,Mahapan in Sindhudurg district,Palghar,Wada,Virthan,Ansoli,Aste,Bhiwandi,Uttan in Thane district,Balegaon between Kalyan and Junnar,and Kalyan itself. However,each of them barring Navi Mumbai faced hurdles such as their proximity to the Sahyadri Hill range or major rivers,distance from Mumbai,proximity to defence installations,and location on marshy or coastal land.

“For any aeroplane to take-off,you need a three-degree gliding angle and a buffer of two degrees and in most of the other locations the hill-range acts as an obstruction,” said the official. It is “ridiculous” now to hunt for a new location considering 70 percent of the land needed for the project was already in the government’s possession in Navi Mumbai and significant amounts of money,time and manpower had been invested to study the environmental and social impacts of the project. The Louis Berger Group,the US-based consultant for the Environment Impact Assessment report,had also approved the Navi Mumbai site after rejecting the others. “It is not an emotional or environmental matter for us. But this site is the most practical and feasible. The second airport cannot be located anywhere except Navi Mumbai,” said the official. (With inputs from Shweta Desai)

TOMORROW: SWALLOWED BY THE SLUMS