AAI in infra push, three new airports on anvil

New Delhi: Airport Authority of India (AAI) is going for a massive revamp in Airport infrastructure projects, where new airports are being introduced or the existing airport infrastructure is being upgraded in twelve places.

Three new airports to be launched—Pakyong airport in Sikkim, Jharsuguda in Odisha and Jabalpur airport in Madhya Pradesh. In Lucknow, the extension of the building will be done. In Chennai, a new building will be inaugurated. In Dehradun, Patna, Leh, Trichy and in Pune new terminal buildings will also be inaugurated.

Apart from these, new civil enclave to be inaugurated in Agra and in Kolhapur the runway to be extended. Currently, there are 129 airports and civil enclaves across the country are run by AAI, among which 94 are operational.

Earlier, Kolhapur airport was one of the 'ghost airports' as it was non-operational. In 2016, the former civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju informed in the Upper House that there were such airports, where expenditure was over Rs. 11 crores and earning was only Rs. 69 Lakh and the incumbent NDA government at the centre tried to motivate airlines to operate to these non-operational airports across the country.

Apart from Kolhapur, Juhu and Sholapur, Akola and Jalgaon are in Maharashtra. Rajasthan and Punjab have three each in the list, such as Jaisalmer, Bhatinda, Ludhiana and Pathankot, where as West Bengal also has one and five are in southern India.

At the same time, the ministry feels that the capacity extension to be done as the demand is growing. Recently, according to the data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), domestic air passenger traffic grew 16.53 per cent to 11.86 million in May this year over the same period a year ago.

Twelve domestic airlines together flew 11.85 million passengers as compared to 10.17 million passengers in May 2017, the data mentioned.