Shortage of Parking bays hits Airlines
Domestic airlines are facing an acute shortage of parking bays at airports. There are around 200 parking slots at domestic airports and work is under way to construct 60 bays by the Airports Authority of India. But, there is still a shortfall of over 250 bays. The situation will worsen the fleet sizes of domestic carries are expected to double from 213 to over 400 by 2010.New entrants like Coimbatore-based Paramount Airways operates with a fleet of three aircraft, and plans to add 20 more in the next two years. M Thiagarajan, the company’s managing director, says, “At present, we park our aircraft at airports in Coimbatore, Madurai and Chennai. But eventually, inadequate parking facility will pose problems for airlines.” Indigo, which is the latest entrant in the aviation sector, has ordered 100 Airbus A320s. Air-Deccan’s fleet strength is expected to go up to 53 aircraft by the year-end. Spicejet currently has nine aircraft and is expected to add 26 more.
Though master plans have been drawn up for modernising the Mumbai and Delhi airports, for other metro and non-metro cities, it will take more than three years to upgrade the existing infrastructure as aircraft manufacturers will start delivering to operators by the year-end.
Air Deccan, which like other airlines is also in a fleet-expansion mode, says busy airports like Mumbai and Delhi will be the worst hit if parking bays are not constructed before fleet sizes expand. The terminals and related infrastructure can follow. Says RK Krishnaswamy, head operations, Air Deccan, “Though at present there is not much space crunch to park aircraft, with the new entrants in the Indian domestic air space, the situation is likely to worsen.” At present there are ten domestic airlines in the country.
