Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced 100 more airports by 2024 under the UDAN scheme.
This is in line with the government’s commitment to promote domestic travel and include those areas which haven’t been connected so far. This is a part of the national infrastructure plan.
According to the Economic Survey 2019-20 which was presented on Friday, the government has provided a congenial environment so that the government can have 1,200 planes by 2023-24.
In the last Budget, the finance minister had announced that the government will take steps to make India an aircraft leasing hub.
The Survey also said despite a major airline suspending operations in April, the operators were quick to fill the void and airlines operators in the country have scaled up their aircraft seat capacity from an estimated 0.07 annual seats per capita in 2013 to 0.12 in 2018.
To ease the strain on existing airport capacities, 100 more are to be made operational by FY 2023-24. Besides using 46 idle airstrips, 16 private greenfield airports, 15 AAI airports, 31 heliports, and 12 waterdromes would also be developed, as per the Survey.