Indian tycoons want their own airports

Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Corp. Photo / Getty Images

Red tape delays private jets for days, shrinking fleet as economy booms.

On a recent trip to the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, federal Power Minister Piyush Goyal sensed the region could woo investment from SoftBank Group Corp's billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, who happened to be elsewhere in the country.

When Goyal asked for Son to fly to the state capital, Raipur, immediately, Son's colleague - mindful of India's thicket of aviation rules - thought the minister had lost his mind.

"He said, are you crazy?" Goyal recounted in an interview in New Delhi. "We're in a US-registered plane, just to get a permission takes 14 days."

Goyal said he made about 10 calls to clear Son's flight in just 15 minutes, a rare intervention that few in India can expect. Instead, onerous rules sometimes delay private planes by days and are causing India's business jet fleet to shrink even as the economy grows 7 per cent. For a body representing billionaires such as Anand Mahindra, a step towards friendlier skies is to develop a network of airports just for private jets.

The group, the Business Aircraft Operators Association, is lobbying the government to turn an airport near the financial capital, Mumbai, into the country's first airfield exclusively for business planes. It's currently used for military aircraft.

"It's about building an ecosystem for general and business aviation, and it's also about creating jobs," said Jayant Nadkarni, the association's president in Gurgaon near New Delhi.

"Our industry is in recession. We've seen slowing growth for the last seven to eight years, and this year it will be less than zero per cent."

In Mumbai, a lack of space at the main airport forces small aircraft planning stops of more than 48 hours to park hundreds of miles away after dropping off their passengers, according to the association.

Whether the Government will move quickly is an open question, given the pressure to focus on helping the 750 million Indians living on less than US$2 ($3.16) a day.

"Policymakers in India consider it politically risky to be seen supporting business jets," said Amber Dubey, KPMG's New Delhi-based head of aerospace.