By IANS,
New Delhi : The government Thursday allowed private airlines to form subsidiaries for ground handling at six metro airports in the country.
“It was decided that they (airlines) will be given an opportunity to form their ground handling subsidiaries,” a civil aviation ministry official said after a meeting between Minister Ajit Singh and private airlines.
“Now a new policy will be drafted to accommodate the private airlines’ ground handling divisions,” said the official.
At present, airlines do ground handling by hiring a third party agency.
The ground handling services includes not just check-in and baggage and cargo handling but also aircraft cleaning, loading of food and beverages, providing electricity back-up, water and transporting passengers to and from the aircraft.
The private airlines had challenged the 2007 ground handling policy in the Supreme Court in 2011, saying they were losing their cost advantage.
Under the 2007 policy, three ground handling agencies, including the Air India-Singapore Airport Terminal Services, were to be selected for six main metro airports.
The other two would have been the airport operator’s own ground handling unit and a third company selected by the way of competitive bidding.
The scheme would have provided the Airports Authority of India (AAI) with an additional revenue of Rs.350 crore per annum.