Tag Archives: Airports Authority of India

In the FY 2023-24 so far, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has achieved a capital expenditure of ₹4,778 Crores, leading India’s civil aviation industry towards progress. AAI is earmarked to undertake a capital expenditure of Rs 25,000 crore for the period between 2019-20 to 2024-25.

The aviation sector of India continues to fly higher as Airports Authority of India (AAI) witnesses 50 per cent of its pre-COVID era flight movement and passenger footfalls. AAI reveals that amidst this growth, Belagavi Airport has emerged as the third busiest airport in Karnataka, with 2.6 lakh passengers flying with 6.4K flights in the last 10 months.

The Airports Authority of India has achieved another milestone in getting its staff across the country, as well as their dependants, fully vaccinated. As part of this massive initiative, the Authority claims that all the staff at the Jammu airport is now vaccinated. Since the launch of the initiative, Airports Authority of India has conducted the mass inoculation drive across several airports under its aegis.

Arvind Singh, Chairman of Airports Authority of India (AAI) and a 1988 IAS officer of Maharashtra Cadre, has been appointed as the new Secretary of Tourism, GOI, and will be taking charge on February 1, 2021.  He will be replacing Yogendra Tripathi, who, after more than 2 years as Tourism Secretary, will be joining as Secretary, Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals. Singh, had also served as Additional Chief Secretary (Energy) in Government of Maharashtra.

Owing to the accumulation of dues over a long period of time, Airports Authority of India has now placed Air India on a Cash & Carry mode at four airports – Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Chennai and Kolkata. The airline will now be required to make payment for parking or landing purposes on a daily or per-flight basis at these select airports.

Chennai Airport will be the first airport in India to house five screens of PVR Cinemas. The screens will be located in the multi-level car parking complex, which is under construction. The facility is being built at a cost of ₹250 crore by the Olympia Group, and will not only have a theatre but also many options for food and beverage. The five screens would have roughly over 1,000 seats. According to officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the multi-level parking would be completed and thrown open to the public by October. It has been revealed that the facility will be constructed in such a way that it will be convenient for passengers to park their cars, shop and watch a film. The facility is coming up on either side of the Chennai Metro Rail station at a height of 27 metres. The parking facility can accommodate 2,000 cars. The theatre will be built by Olympia Group for a budget of 250 crore rupees.

Airports Authority of India (AAI) is readying to invest more than Rs.25,000 crores in airport infrastructure, says Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State(I/C) for Civil aviation. “India, being the third largest domestic civil aviation market in the world and showing a robust growth, is poised for greater heights. With the kind of fleet expansion underway, India will soon have about 2000 civil aviation aircrafts in the sky, we will be doubling the number of airports with Airports Authority of India (AAI) readying to invest more than Rs.25,000 crores in Airport infrastructure and we have a structured privatisation program in place,” he said.

Senior IAS officer Arvind Singh has been appointed as the chairman of Airports Authority of India and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu will head the National Highways Authority of India as part of a major bureaucratic reshuffle effected by the Centre. Singh is at present working in his cadre-state Maharashtra. He has been appointed as the chief of AAI in the rank and pay of additional secretary, an order issued by the personnel ministry said.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) have issued a notice inviting bids to operate as many as 30 routes under Round 3.1 of the UDAN regional connectivity scheme. AAI and MoCA decided to consider an additional bidding round under UDAN 3.0 to include priority/cancelled/crucial routes which have not been covered under UDAN Scheme so far. Routes available under round 3.1 includes routes connecting unserved, underserved airports and unserved routes connecting served airports. Bids have been invited for routes such as Guwahati-Tezpur, Guwahati-Passighat, Port Blair-Hutbay/Havelock/Neil Island, Raipur-Bilaspur, Patna-Hazaribagh, Hazaribagh-Kolkata, Hissar-Chandigarh, Hissar-Jammu, Kargil-Leh/Jammu, Srinagar-Thoise and Rewa-Jhansi/Bhopal among many other routes. For the first time, the centre has also bid out routes for Lakshadweep islands including Agatti-Mincoy and Agatti-Kavaratti. According to the notice, airlines opting to bid for these new routes shall not receive any “exclusivity of operation” right as is given to airlines under previous UDAN routes coupled with any additional concession apart from funds through viable gap funding. The government has invited bids till February 22, 2019 after which it shall award the routes to airlines on February 27, 2019. It has set a deadline of six months for the airlines to commence operations on such routes from the date of award to the airline. Centre, on January 25, released 235 routes that were awarded under third phase of the scheme. Certain routes, however, were yet to be finalised in consultation with state governments and were withheld by the ministry  

Airport Authority of India (AAI)’s 94 airports incurred losses in the financial year 2017-18, informed Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister for Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation, in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha recently. “The losses are mainly due to low revenue generation to meet the total expenditure of the respective airports,“ said Prabhu while citing the reason. AAI owns and manages 129 airports around the country. He further said that the authority has taken steps to enhance aeronautical revenue in the form of increase in tarrif at non-major airports and measures for commercial exploitation at some airports to increase the revenue and to reduce losses.