Vì sao Ấn Độ mua lượng máy bay kỷ lục?

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No nation in the world is buying as many airplanes (máy bay) as India. Its largest airlines have ordered nearly 1,000 jets this year, committing (đầu tư) tens of billions of dollars to a spending spree (vung tiền chi tiêu) that is unparalleled (chưa từng có) in aviation (ngành hàng không). In New Delhi, Indira Gandhi International Airport will be ready for 109 million passengers (hành khách) next year, as it prepares to become the world’s second busiest, behind Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the United States.

And this is happening in a vast (rộng lớn) country still heavily reliant (phụ thuộc rất nhiều) on trains — with 20 journeys by rail for every one by air.

Air travel remains out of the financial reach (nằm ngoài khả năng tài chính) of most Indians. An estimated 3 percent of the country’s population flies on a regular basis. But in a nation of 1.4 billion people, that percentage represents 42 million — executives (người điều hành, quản lý; giám đốc), students and engineers who yearn to get quickly from here to there inside India’s borders, and to gain easier access to destinations beyond, for both business and vacation (du lịch).

...Arrivals to the international terminal at Indira Gandhi Airport are greeted by a wall of giant sculptural hands (bàn tay điêu khắc khổng lồ), their fingers and palms (lòng bàn tay) folded into the signifying shapes of the Buddha’s gestures (hình dạng biểu thị cử chỉ của Đức Phật), looking both ancient and futuristic. In 2012, when they were installed, 30 million passengers passed through the airport.

...Indira Gandhi Airport is racing to get bigger. In July it added a fourth runway and opened an elevated taxiway. The company that operates it, GMR Airports, took over in 2006, a time when all arrivals walked past cows lazing in the dust (con bò nằm trong bụi) to reach a taxi stand. By 2018 the facility was rated as India’s most valuable infrastructural asset. To spare the use of jet fuel, a battery-powered TaxiBot lugs idling planes around the tarmac (đường băng). An automated luggage-handling system can sort 6,000 bags an hour.

Two beneficiaries of India’s expanding (mở rộng) aviation market are the world’s largest airplane makers: Boeing in America and Airbus in Europe. In February, Air India, which the Tata Group took private (biến thành công ty tư nhân) last year, agreed to buy 250 planes from Airbus and 220 from Boeing, worth a combined (tổng cộng) $70 billion. In June, IndiGo, the country’s biggest carrier by passengers and flights, ordered 500 new Airbus A320s.

source: nytimes,