The civil aviation ministry is planning to set up a fund under the Airports Authority of India to maintain the 114 airports that are currently making losses.

Officials said earnings from the divestment of the Delhi and Mumbai airports, like the concession fee and share in revenue, would form the corpus of the fund.

The proceeds from the divestment of other airports could also be directed to the fund. Later, the fund could be financed through an airport cess or a subsidy from the Centre. The officials said the Naresh Chandra Committee was also likely to make a similar recommendation.

"It is through the profits of the Delhi and Mumbai airports that we manage to cross-subsidise the other loss-making airports, both the operational and non-operational ones. Therefore, a fund will be required to maintain these airports," an official said. Of the 123 airports under the AAI, only nine make profits.

Among the rest, all of which are in the red, 72 are operational and 42 are not.

According to the revised estimate for 2002-03, the Delhi and Mumbai airports account for 59.9 per cent of the AAI's revenue. The combined profit-before-tax of the two airports in 2002-03 is Rs 506.01 crore (Rs 5.060 billion) (revised estimate), while that of AAI is Rs 497 crore (Rs 4.97 billion).

In 2001-02, besides Mumbai and Delhi, only seven other airports -- Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa, Bangalore, Juhu and Pune -- posted profits.

In 2001-02, the profit (before tax) of AAI was Rs 476 crore (Rs 4.76 billion), while that of the nine profit-making airports was close to Rs 1,375.39 crore (Rs 13.753 billion). Thus, the 114 other airports under the AAI posted a combined loss of Rs 900 crore (Rs 9 billion).

The ministry has already begun the process of divestment in the Delhi and Mumbai airports, and shortlisted nearly 20 airports for privatisation.

Most of the remaining airports, sources said, were unlikely to find any takers and would have to be maintained by the AAI.