UK budget carrier EasyJet has put the cost of the London Gatwick drone disruption at around £10 million ($13 million), although overall flight cancellations for the airline fell in the first quarter.

London Gatwick was closed for more than a day during December following the sighting of drones in the vicinity, with a substantial impact on EasyJet, which has its largest base at the airport.

EasyJet says the incident affected around 82,000 passengers and over 400 cancelled flights

IATA has called on the European Union and the UK to provide clarity on how the bloc's proposal for a cap on flights would work in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Under its planning for such a scenario, the European Commission in December proposed that any flights operated by UK airlines between the country and the bloc on 29 March 2019 would be allowed to continue for 12 months; however, it also said that those carriers would not be able to add new routes or increase the frequencies of existing services during the period.

"That current flight levels will be protected even with a hard Brexit is an important assurance," states IATA's director general Alexandre de Juniac. "But with two months left until Britain leaves the EU, airlines still do not know exactly what kind of Brexit they should be planning for."

India's government has issued a 20-year roadmap for civil aviation growth that projects a sixfold increase in the country's passenger numbers, to 1.1 billion by 2040, and a quadrupling in the commercial airline fleet over the same span, to 2,400 aircraft.

The "Vision 2040" roadmap, released on 15 January at an industry conference, also forecasts that the number of airports will increase from 99 in March 2018 to around 190-200. India's top 31 cities by population are foreseen having at least two airports each, with Delhi and Mumbai having three each. The incremental land requirement is estimated at 150,000 acres, and the capital investment at $40-50 billion.

To support the growth of infrastructure, the government may consider establishing a $2 billion fund to support low-traffic airports in their initial operating phases. Land pooling is being considered to keep land acquisition costs low and provide landowners with high-value developed plots in the vicinity of the airports.

Meanwhile, the government sees air cargo throughput quadrupling to 17 million tons, with cargo processed paperlessly and at higher speed. New Delhi expects the country's freighter fleet "to expand multifold with the growth in e-commerce", as it seeks to make India a transshipment hub for South Asia.