| |NOVEMBER 201919swiftly expanding its global presence as an aviation and defense engineering hub. The country is now considered as one of the largest domestic civil aviation market in the world. It is expected that by the year 2024, India will overtake the UK to become the third-largest market. But there are many factors which are prov-ing to be major hurdles in this regard. The excessive costs and low returns, re-curring technical snags have placed the Indian Aviation Industry in an uncertain position at times. The most notable sign of it is the fall of business by Jet Airways, once India's biggest airline by passen-gers and second-largest for several years. Jet Airways, which closed its operations, has INR 15,000cr outstanding dues. An-other parallel example would be Air In-dia which has debt repayment worth INR 9000 cr. Go Air has landed at least 10 to 48 planes due to lack of network to fly them. Also, SpiceJet and IndiGo aircraft have addressed issues in various terms such as maintenance and others. It is predicted that due to new or-ders for planes, there will be shortfall in commander pilots, a part of which will be filled by more expensive non-native pilots this would lead to a rise in the wage bill. Indigo in February announced to cut 30 daily flights from its schedule due to shortage of crew. Because of this Indigo is hiring 100 non-native com-manders. The foreboding for the future is that losses will continue to grow while debts will keep on piling up. India's carriers, afflicted with long-standing issues and persistent problems is star-ing at a grim future unless the govern-ment addresses these issues plaguing the airline industry.The major factors hindering the In-dian aviation industry is the high jet fuel prices. Jet fuel prices constitute about 40% of costs for an Indian carrier and are taxed higher than anywhere else in the world. Aviation turbine fuel has in-creased by 9% between January and March-end. On top of this low-ticket pricing combined In India's price-sen-sitive market had led airlines into deep losses and will continue to hamper the growth of the airline industry.The jet fuel is 35-40% more expen-sive in India than in the rest of the world. Reduction in the costs would pave ways for airlines to make enormous profits even with the current revenue levels. Amongst the economic crisis just like any other sector the airlines in India are also making futile appeals to the govern-ment for a reduction in taxes on fuel. The government should make an effort to ac-knowledge the concerns of the industry to bring them out of this difficult situa-tion by relaxing the complicated regula-tions like RDG. Though the sector is grappling among multiple issues, several research-es and estimates have predicted an excit-ing future for the industry. In the next de-cade approximately USD 100 billion will be invested on acquisition in the Indian aerospace and defense sector. The coun-try's enormous resource for manufactur-ing like data point for analysis, techni-cal supports and skilled man-power is fostering a brighter days for the sector which in turn would thrive the country's economy on the whole. Considering the potent of this domain the government is coming up with favorable policies to en-hance the present condition. The `Make in India' initiative is shoving the India manufacturers to act as the suppliers to the world. The country's enormous resource for manufacturing like data point for analysis, technical supports and skilled man-power is fostering a brighter days for the sector
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