Feeder and Short haul air transport systems: Current issues\ud related to infrastructure development for sustainability of Civil Aviation growth in India\ud

Civil aviation sector in India is witnessing a boom as the air traffic has shown exponential growth in recent years. Due to the open sky policies, the industry has seen increased competition resulting in significant growth. This paper reviews hierarchy of air transport system, the entry of low cost carriers and their impact on upper class rail travel pattern. The paper also highlights the importance of feeder and short haul air transport network from passengers and regional economic point of view and high degree of multiple effects attached to it. The access and egress facilities to and from airports are extremely important because it is common in feeder and short haul routes that the ratio of airtime to total journey time to accomplish the travel is very small and less attraction to the users. This paper presents the accessibility infrastructure to airports with reference to the current status and bottlenecks associated with it. The need to improve connectivity in terms of capacity and rapid access to existing and new airports with alternative urban transport technologies like Metro Rail, Light Rail, and Monorail has been emphasized in this paper considering the rapid expansion of civil aviation and also from the perspective of ever increasing urban traffic congestion/ pollution levels due to vehicular traffic. Further, the future form of new urban airport (aerotropolis), issues, such as, perspectives in city planning, MRO services of air fleet, air traffic management infrastructure, human resource development, and implementation models which also play catalytic roles are discussed in this paper