技术和数字化如何重塑印度航空业

India’s aviation sector is growing at a highly accelerated speed. Today, it is theworld’s third-largest civil aviation market. Fuelled by rising incomes andpolicy support, passenger traffic is projected to surge from ~376 millioncurrently to as much as three to three and a half billion by 2047. To meet thisdemand and improve service, the industry is embracing a wave ofdigitalisation. Major airlines such as Air India and IndiGo, and airports suchas Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, are adopting articial intelligence (AI),cloud platforms, Internet of ings (IoT), biometric identity and otheradvanced technologies. Initiatives such as the DigiYatra biometric boarding India’s aviation industry has undergone aremarkabletransformation in the pastdecade. Once a fragmented sector withlimited routes, it now connects hundredsof cities through 159 operational airports(as of Feb 2025). Government initiativessuch as the Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik(UDAN) regional connectivity scheme hasplayed a key role by subsidising flights tounderserved regions. Under UDAN, 619new regional routes and 88 airports arenowoperational.Meanwhile,strong Infrastructure Pipeline for FY20 to FY25,with a target to add 50 airports in the nextfive years. In this dynamic context, costpressuresand capacity constraints aredrivingdigital change.Airlines faceintense competition: IndiGo now carries~65% of domestic traffic, and Akasa/StarAir and new Low-Cost Carriers (LCCs) areexpandingrapidly.To stay competitiveand profitable, carriers and airports aret u r n i n gto te c h no lo g y s o lut io n s . MARKET SNAPSHOT AND KEY STATISTICS CORETECHNOLOGY ADOPTION Biometric and digital identity systems Indiais rapidly rolling out biometricboardingand identity verification tocreate a touchless travel experience. Theflagship initiative is Digi Yatra, a facial-recognition platform for seamless check-in and boarding. As of mid-2025, DigiYatra has over 15 million active users andoperates across 24 airports nationwide. Itallows travellers to link their Aadhaar(nationalID)and boarding pass inadvance, then simply walk through smartgates with face-scans replacing manualI Dc h e c k s .S i m i l a r l y,A A I h a si m ple me nte dB io me t r i c B o a r d i n gSystems(BBS)at key hubs(first Delhi,Bengaluru and Varanasi, then expandingtoKolkata,Pune,Vijayawada by Mar2023).More than 200,000 passengersh a v ea l r e a d y u s e d t h e s e f a c i a l customer-facingside,airlines havelaunched AI-driven chatbots and virtualassistantsthat can handle routinequeries. For instance, Air India deployedan AI virtual agent called AI.g (short for‘ArtificiallyIntelligent Guest’)thathandles about 30,000 customer queriesper day across 1,300 topics. It achieves aremarkable97%“containment”rate,meaningonly 3%of queries requirehuman agent backup. This has drasticallyreduced call centre workloads. Similarly,IndiGointroduced a generative-AIchatbotnamed“6Eskai”(launched Nov2023) which uses GPT-4 to converse withpassengers in 10 Indian languages. Early AI and ML AI and ML are being embedded acrossairline and airport operations. On the of AI is transforming customer supportandoperations.(Air India’s award-winning app even includes AI.g as a built- C l o u dc o m p u t i n g a n d d i g i t a l Airlines and airports are migrating coreIT systems to cloud and platform-basedsolutions for scalability and agility. Manycarriers are replacing legacy mainframeswith modern Passenger Service Systems(PSS) on the cloud. For example, IndiGo(which handles ~65% of India's domestictraffic) uses Navitaire's New Skies PSS inthe cloud and has also selected AmadeusRevenue Management (RM) Flex, a cloud-based,AI-driven pricing platformintegrated with its Navitaire system. ThisenablesIndiGo to make real-timechangesto fares according to marketdemand. Air India implemented a full ITtransformationafter privatisation and fitted with LoRa (Low-Power Wide-Area)sensors so their location and usage can bemonitoredin real time.If too manytrolleys accumulate at a gate, or none in azone,the system alerts staff to moveresourcesreducing passenger waits.Hyderabad also launched an AI-powered“digitaltwin”operations centre thataggregateslive data(passenger flow,baggage, runways) to optimise operationsproactively. Across India, airports haveautomatedbaggage handling with AI:Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru now usehigh-speed,automated sorters thatminimisemanual errors.Bengaluru’sairport even allows passengers to self-drop checked bags at kiosks using facialrecognition, eliminating the need for IDchecksat the counter.Smart security IoT and smart infrastructure Airports and airline ground operationsa r eu s i n g I o T t o c r e a t e“ s m a r t ”infrastructure.A flagship example isHyderabadAirport;Rajiv Gandhi A I R L I N E - S P E C I F I CD I G I T A L Air India Air India (flag carrier, now privatised) hasembarked on a major digital overhaul. Itmigrated all critical IT systems to theMicrosoft Azure cloud, enabling scalablecomputefor