Airport privatization will bring competition, facilities

Manish Gajbhiye

Aurangabad, Sept 10:

The union Government has approved the privatization of 13 Airports in the country. The airports will be privatized by clubbing six big airports with seven small airports. The big airports to be clubbed are Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Indore, Raipur, Trichy and Varanasi. The seven small ones that are clubbed with the big ones are Aurangabad, Hubli, Tirupati, Jabalpur, Kangra, Kushinagar and Gaya. Aurangabad Airport has been included in the list of the airports to be privatized after clubbing with the Raipur Airport.

The experts opined that the privatization of the Airports would bring competition among the private players, and as a result, the facilities and connectivity for the passengers will be increased. Hence, the move of privatization is opined to be beneficial for the city aviation scenario.

The Aurangabad Airport has incurred huge losses in the past few months. However, no measures were taken to increase the revenue here. Although, the Airport premises has huge land and can be used for generating revenue by the authorities. The Airport Authority of India (AAI) is a government agency, and the work system established does not encourage healthy competition to generate revenue at the airports. The experience of the officers and the employees has not been utilized by providing proper training, the experts claimed.

Privatization of the Aurangabad airport will increase facilities for the passengers and will also increase connectivity to various cities, says aviation expert Ahmed Jaleel. The private agencies, operating the airports, take efforts to approach the airlines to increase the connectivity in order to gain maximum profit. Moreover, the facilities for the passengers will be enhanced as the passengers are always ready to pay more charges if better facilities are provided, Jaleel mentioned.

The president of the Aurangabad Tourism Development Foundation, Jaswant Singh said that the tourism industry in the city had been demanding better facilities in the Airport for a longer period. The privatization will bring Malls, cafeterias, and others to the Airport. As it has been seen at the Mumbai and Hyderabad Airports, that the passengers are provided with all the facilities needed. Moreover, the increase in connectivity with other cities will increase the tourism in the city, he added.