Videocon loses bid for Delhi, Mumbai airports

The government has rejected Videocon's bid for modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said.

"The application of the consortia Videocon International, Methven Corp Pty Ltd was rejected because there was no airport operator entity in this consortium," Patel said in the Rajya Sabha in New Delhi.

The government has granted 12 weeks to the nine short-listed private and international consortia to submit the final technical and financial bids, he said.

The firms in fray are Bharti Enterprise-Changi Airport, Hochtief Airport-L&T, Macquarie Bank-Aeroports de Paris, GMR- Frankfurt Airport, TAV Investment-Ganjam Trading, GVK-Airports Company of South Africa, DLF Universal-Malaysia Airport, Reliance-VINCI Airports and DS Construction-Apollo-Flughafen Munchen Germany.

To another query on pilots, Patel said during the last three years, 3 pilots have left Air India and 13 have left Indian Airlines.

During the same period, 38 B737 pilots and 4 ATR pilots also left Alliance Air. "There has been some effect on operations of some of the airlines (due to the exodus)," he said.

He said that low fare Air India Express would operate from Kozhikode, Kochi, Delhi, Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Al-Ain, Muscat and Salalah in 2005-06.

He also added that the government proposed to set up an independent regulatory authority for the airports.