Concluding the long-running dispute between the government and local airlines, the aviation minister, Ajit Singh has allowed the domestic carriers to establish their own ground-handling units at India’s six metro airports. Airlines can create their subsidiaries for the purpose of ground handling and thus can be participated in the process to become the designated ground handler.
As per the minster’s proposed 2007 ground-handling policy, only three external ground handlers, a business projected to be worth Rs 2,000 crore a year. However, Jet Airways (India), IndiGo, Kingfisher Airlines, GoAir and SpiceJet had opposed the policy citing reasons as expensive operations, approached the Supreme Court against the proposed policy, which is likely to be heard on November 6, 2012.
However, with a new ground-handling policy being drafted, the airlines may withdraw their case against the government. Further, Singh had asked airlines to induce low-cost ground handlers to come to India to support competitiveness and cost effectiveness, since outsourcing of work will not be permitted on the back of security reasons.
The issue however, was discussed at a meeting that also included aviation secretary K N Srivastava, joint secretary Prabhat Kumar, Air India chairman Rohit Nandan, IndiGo promoter Rahul Bhatia, SpiceJet chief executive Neil Mills, Jet Airways chief commercial officer Sudheer Raghavan and airport representatives.
Ground-handling services normally include check-in, baggage handling, cargo handling, aircraft cleaning, loading and unloading of food and beverages on the aircraft, providing electricity back-up to planes at airports, supplying water to the carrier, ferrying passengers to and from planes and maintaining on-board toilets.
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