The Union Budget has allocated Rs 2,41,000 crore for the transportation sector. ´For transportation sector as a whole, including rail, roads, shipping, I have provided Rs 241,387 crore in 2017-18,´ Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said while presenting the Union Budget 2017-18 in the Lok Sabha.

About 44 airports across the country have high potential for operations under the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) for civil aviation, UDAN, according to a report from industry body FICCI.

A sum of $10 billion would be spent in the next five years to develop airport infrastructure in India so that the country could become the world´s third largest aviation market in seven years, Civil Aviation Secretary RN Choubey has said.

The government´s demonetisation move, which reportedly hit demand in several sectors, has not had any impact on air travel in the country. The Indian aviation industry´s strong passenger growth continued unabated in December when domestic airlines flew 23.91 per cent more passengers than a year earlier, according to latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The decision of the Government of India to spend $10 billion towards airport infrastructure development is a critical move. India is one the few nations in the globe which has recorded a year-on-year passenger growth of nearly 23 per cent.

The new civil aviation policy is aimed at creating an ecosystem of affordable flying for the masses as well as easing industry-related concerns which were long due. To do so, the policy has addressed issues from the regulatory, financial and operational perspectives in a comprehensive manner in three main areas

The new aviation policy has brought in a lot of forward-looking changes to boost the slumping aviation industry; these changes have been made to make the industry more dynamic and lucrative for all the players and to level the playing field. One of the major changes which have been welcomed by the smaller airlines is that, prior to the policy change, an airline needed to have 20 planes and five years of local operations to fly overseas.

Airports are the next infrastructural buzzword that will be the game-changer in India´s developmental leap. This buzzword is expected to be exploited using existing growth drivers like exponential growth in passenger traffic and incremental cargo volumes over the next decade.

The reactions are positive and industry is also quite optimistic on the introduction of NCAP 2016. The objective of the government through NCAP is to establish an integrated ecosystem enabling significant growth of the civil aviation sector, which in turn would promote tourism, increase employment and lead to balanced regional growth.