AIRPORT REPORT: MUMBAI
Indian aviation – the facts
• One state-owned airline( Air India), and six private airline groups
• India has 130 airports. They include 17 that handle international traffic and around 80 which handle regular scheduled domestic services
• Over 160 million passengers passed through India’ s airports in 2012 – 60 % of them being handled at privatised airports. This compares to just 40 million in 2002, when privatised gateways accommodated only 2 % of the traffic
• Low-cost dominates the domestic market, accounting for a 70 % share of traffic
• Passenger numbers are expected to reach 452 million per annum by 2021, making India the third largest aviation market in the world
“ T2 will make CSIA a gateway to both the city of Mumbai and the hinterland for millions of international passengers and, more importantly, we are setting new benchmarks in ways of operating, it will receive global recognition for its design and quality of service.”
Reddy, the son of GVK founder GV Krishna Reddy, has a diverse portfolio of businesses to oversee. They include energy, resources, airports and transportation infrastructure.
And he has steered the group’ s ever-expanding airport profile, which now includes Chhatrapati Shivaji, Bengaluru, and, will soon include a terminal at Denpasar in north Bali and a new greenfield airport at Yogyakarta.
Reddy says the T2 project was not without its challenges. GVK planners were hampered in the first instance by the fact the airport is hemmed in by urban development making expansion difficult. Delays and the region’ s weak financial outlook also had a knock on effect on passenger growth forecasts, but the construction is now on track. The new facility represents the cornerstone of GVK’ s route development strategy, which seeks to attract new carriers from Europe, Asia, Russia and the CIS and North America under the campaigning title“ A hub in the making”.
With this in mind, T2 has been designed to handle large volumes of connecting passengers and to allow airlines to easily organise banks of arrivals and departures, two elements that are seen as crucial by GVK to make CSIA an enticing proposition for long-haul carriers.
While its ultra modern facilities will no doubt prove attractive to airlines, Mumbai serves as the beating heart of India’ s financial, business and entertainment industries, many offering compelling reasons for carriers to come, says Reddy.
“ I think airlines are going to be attracted to Mumbai because it is the commercial centre of India and ideally located for international routes. There is currently a good mix of different carriers, but we are targeting long-haul airlines connecting Europe and the US and emerging markets such as China, Africa and South America,” says Reddy.
According to its route development action plan, GVK is seeking new services to Manila, Ho Chi Minh, Jakarta, Beijing, Guangzhou, Moscow and Tehran in the next one to two years, followed by services to Rome, Lisbon, Manchester and Seoul amongst others over the coming decade.
The airport’ s efforts are already bearing fruit and it celebrated a new Air China service to Chengdu last year.
Customer service The new Terminal 2 represents the culmination of GVK’ s brief to improve the customer experience and capacity of CSIA.
When it was awarded the contract to operate CSIA in 2006, the airport was congested, its facilities were in a bad state and it had a reputation among passengers for delays and lengthy queues.
Proof of what has been achieved since can be found in the host of awards for customer service and safety, including the prestigious Golden Peacock National Quality Award for 2012 from India’ s Institute of Directors, and the ACI ASQ award for 2011 in the 25-40 million passengers per annum category.
For Reddy the awards are a nice recognition of what has been at the core of GVK’ s business philosophy for decades.
“ As far as customer service is concerned, I believe it is of paramount importance. Our family business began in the hospitality sector and we have hotels as well as airports; as a family, we very much believe in hospitality as the core of our business,” he says.
But Mumbai was only the beginning of GVK’ s airport ambitions, and just three years after taking over Mumbai, the company formed the major part of a consortium that was awarded the contract to manage Bangalore’ s newly opened Bengaluru International Airport.
AIRPORT WORLD / JUNE-JULY 2013 21