Traffic movement at Pune airport for FY16-21 likely to cross 1 crore: AERA

Pune: The Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) submitted a report to the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) recently, which estimated that there will be a 25 per cent rise in passenger movement (both domestic and international) at the Pune international airport by 2021.

The report titled – In a matter of determination of aeronautical tariffs at Civil Enclave in respect of Pune airport for the second Control Period (April 1, 2016, to March 31, 2021) – was submitted on November 9 to the DGCA, New Delhi. The AERA report states that the Pune airport is one of the major airports in western India. The civil enclave is jointly operated by the Airport Authority of India (AAI) and the Indian Air Force (IAF). 

The  Authority of India operates the passenger terminal building and the civil apron while the Indian Air Force provides the airside facilities and air navigation services. 

A meeting with the stakeholders was held on September 18. 
“Passenger and Air Traffic Movement (ATM) during the first control period (April 2012 to March 2016) was more than 1.5 million. The traffic growth rate report, as submitted by the AAI for the second period, says that combined growth of domestic and international passenger movement will cross 1,06,53,055 by the financial year 2020-21.”

“In the second control period, the domestic passengers’ growth rate was recorded at 25 per cent while international passengers grew by 10 per cent during 2016-17 at the airport. Similarly, the ATM was recorded at 18 per cent for domestic and 8 per cent for international flights,” said the report.

According to the report, “The combined growth of passenger movement will increase by 12 per cent for domestic and 10 per cent for international during the financial year (FY) 2018 – 2021. Earlier, it was 19 and 129 per cent, respectively, for FY2006 to FY2016 and 13 per cent and 34 per cent, respectively, for FY2011 to FY2016. The ATM will be 10 per cent and 8 per cent for domestic and international flights, respectively, during 2018–21. Earlier, it was 13 per cent and 24 per cent during 2006-2016 and 13 and 17 per cent during 2011-2016, respectively, for the Pune airport.”

After the evaluations for 5 and 10 years, Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of domestic traffic, the authority is of the view that 10-year CAGR is too high due to lower initial base traffic. Five-year CAGR provides more realistic traffic growth rates for future projections. The AAI has submitted the growth rate, which is in line with five-year CAGR. Hence, the Authority had proposed to adopt growth rates for domestic passengers and ATM traffic during 2017-18 to 2020-21 based on the AAI’s submissions, the report said.

“The authority noted that for international passenger movement and ATM traffic, the growth rate has increased significantly only in the past three years, on the basis of CAGR of 5 years and projections. Therefore, the authority had proposed to consider growth rates for international passengers and ATM traffic as submitted by the AAI,” said the report.

The authority had proposed to true-up traffic as per actual growth achieved during the current control period at the time of determination of tariff for the third control period as explained in earlier orders of the Authority, the report mentioned.

According to the report, “The authority decides to consider the ATM and passenger traffic mentioned above. The authority decides to true-up the traffic volume (ATM and passengers) based on actual traffic in the second control period while determining tariffs for the third control period.”

“With the annual passenger traffic exceeding 65 lakh and near 47,000 aircraft movements, Pune, in 2016-17, was the tenth busiest airport in the country. Over the past years, it has consistently recorded a year-on-year passenger growth of 25 per cent and above. During April-September 2017, the Pune airport was India’s ninth busiest airport, handling 3,897,000 passengers during this period. It witnesses an average footfall of over 21,000 per day. But for space and infrastructural constraints, the Pune airport would have had 200 flights (arrival + departure) per day with an annual traffic of one crore passengers. To sustain this air traffic growth, Pune needs an independent airport urgently. Expanding the existing airport will provide only a temporary relief,” said Dhairyashil Vandekar, aviation expert and analyst.

Passenger movement up by 17 pc
According to the DGCA report, the domestic air passenger movement rose to 96.90 lakh in August 2017 – up 15.63 per cent - from 83.81 lakh reported for the corresponding month of 2016. Data furnished by the DGCA revealed that passenger movement during the January-August period grew by almost 17 per cent.