Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu inaugurated the Global Aviation Summit 2019 in Mumbai on Tuesday.The two-day summit, with a theme ‘Flying for all-especially the next 6 Billion’,is being organised by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in association with FICCI.It offers stakeholders an opportunity to explore, deliberate and understand how technology-driven innovations will change air travel in the decades to come.

India is the seventh-largest country by area and the second-most populous with over 1.35 billion people. It is one of the fastest growing economies of the world and is likely to become the 5fth largest in 2019.

The Indian aviation market is on a high growth path. Total passenger traffic to, from and within India, during Apr-Nov 2018 grew by around 15% year on year as compared to around 6% globally. India is now the seventh largest aviation market with 187 million passengers in FY 2017-18. It is expected to become the third largest by 2022.