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Overcoming a bottleneck

Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel can take some comfort from the smooth progress of the merger of the two national carriers — Air India and Indian Airlines. But his emphasis, in an interview to this newspaper, on expanding aviation infrastructure needs to be translated into action. There is no dearth of planning or projects. The problem has to do with implementation. The track record in the development of airports or in their expansion-cum-modernisation leav es a lot to be desired. The congestion at major airports is evidence enough that the redevelopment effort has not kept pace with the surge in traffic. New Delhi and Mumbai may be a separate story altogether. But the air traffic situation in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Thiruvananthapuram cries for urgent attention. Bangalore and Hyderabad are to get new greenfield airports next year, but the Union Cabinet has just given the nod for the expansion of Chennai and Kolkata airports, which will take some time to implement because of the processes and procedures involved. Land acquisition for the projects also poses local as well as political problems for the agencies involved. These are issues that the Union Aviation Ministry, the Airports Authority of India (AAI), and the State governments can resolve only collectively.

Such problems are not restricted to metropolitan cities and major airports. The capital towns and the second-tier towns in major States, which come under the AAI’s programme to upgrade 35 non-metro airports, need immediate attention. The AAI must provide for a second runway in as many fast-developing centres as possible, so that the airport does not get closed down when one aircraft skids in bad weather. In places such as Visakhapatnam, the very location of the airport needs to be reviewed. During the monsoon season and in winter, this airport in coastal Andhra Pradesh, remains out of commission most of the days. As for merchant airports, the government will do well to go slow in pursuing the idea. The aviation sector urgently needs a regulatory authority to oversee and streamline these developments, and creating that body should be the Minister’s first priority. Only such an authority can ensure fairplay, reasonableness, and accountability in such areas as fare structure and quality of service to passengers especially by the low-cost airlines and in the matter of levying user charges at the new and renovated airports.

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