Private Profit

Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana

PRIVATE INTERESTS OR

THE LARGER GOOD?
The closure of the existing airports in Hyderabad and Bengaluru would be a further loss to users, airlines, staff and the numerous people engaged in transport, catering and other services at a busy metropolitan airport. The Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Civil Aviation has strongly recommended that these existing airports be kept open but the minister and other authorities have rejected this amply justified demand.
We have seen that due to gross underestimation of growth and poor planning, the new airports would not be able to cope with estimated traffic. BIAL CEO Albert Brunner argues that demands to keep the old airports functioning are usual in such cases but that a city the size of Bengaluru does not require two airports. Numerous cities around the world testify to just the opposite, dividing the airports between domestic or regional short-haul flights and longer domestic and international ones. Captain Gopinath of Deccan Aviation has argued that, with the opening up of civil aviation in India, if passengers could be allowed to choose airlines, why not allow them to choose airports? In Bengaluru and Hyderabad, the existing airports could similarly be kept open for low-cost carriers, regional flights, courier services, executive jets and so on. All categories of users and service providers would gain. The new private operators may lose some revenue in the short term but not in the longer term when expanding traffic would more than make up.
Both the government and the private operators have cited contract provisions supposedly calling for existing airports to shut down. Closer reading of the official aviation policy governing these contracts suggests that this is not as water-tight as it is made out to be. The policy actually states that no new or greenfield airport would “normally” be allowed within 150 km unless special circumstances warrant it. Well, the government has just given approval for a Greenfield airport in Greater Noida outside Delhi which is much nearer to the Delhi airport than in these cases, and the capacity issues and costs to budget carriers and their users are special enough circumstances. It remains to be seen what will come of the recent ruling of the High Court in Bengaluru that the old airport in the city be kept open!
Question is, will the government take the necessary action and correct an obvious wrong in favour of the common good or simply allow short-term commercial interests of a few parties to prevail?
Further, modernisation of 35 non-metro airports has been initiated under the aegis of the AAI but involving private players in different ways. Will the government learn the right lessons for this further bout of privatisation, under whatever disguised form, of these airports and of other regional airports?