Slowdown takes its toll on airports upgrade...

The slowdown in the aviation industry has hit the development of the country's airports.

The terminal and airside development of as many as nine of the 16 non-metro airports, supposed to be completed by next month, has been delayed till next year. This included construction and expansion of terminal buildings, runways and taxiways, among other things.

According to officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), which is developing these airports, the upgrade of Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangalore, Khajuraho, Varanasi, Dehradun, Imphal and Pune airports would be delayed till next year, while work at Jaipur, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam, Trichy and Guwahati would be completed this year.

The modernisation of Udaipur airport has been done. "Work on these nine airports will not be completed before March 2009," said an AAI official. AAI's total investment in the modernisation of these 16 airports is around Rs 1,840 crore. Of this, Rs 1,360 crore will be spent on construction and modernisation of terminals. The authority is spending Rs 12,434 crore on airport infrastructure in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period.

This, industry experts said, would not affect matters due to the ongoing downturn in air traffic. Domestic air traffic decreased by around 20 per cent in September this year compared with the same month a year ago. The AAI is not the only one to slacken its pace. Faced by a major decline in the number of flights and a consequent fall in the number of passengers, Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), the GMR-led consortium developing Delhi airport, has delayed the construction of the domestic terminal, 1D, to next year.

The cityside upgrade of the AAI-developed non-metro airports, which is supposed to be done by private companies, has been stalled. This happened after the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, headed by Sitaram Yechury, accused the inter-ministerial group (IMG), headed by Civil Aviation Secretary Ashok Chawla, of deviating from the guidelines set by the Committee on Infrastructure (CoI). The committee is headed by the prime minister.

The standing committee alleged that while cityside development included only cargo complexes, hotels and flight kitchens, the IMG had allowed the private companies commercial operation and maintenance of terminal buildings. This, it said, would affect the AAI's revenues.

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