Parliamentary panel calls for enhancing passenger experience, operational excellence at AAI airports

Parliamentary panel on Friday recommended that more endeavours be made to enhance the passenger experience and operational excellence at AAI airports

Mumbai: A Parliamentary panel on Friday recommended that more endeavours be made to enhance the passenger experience and operational excellence at AAI airports so that they could match the PPP airports and their service levels are at par with the international standards, according to an official release.

“The Committee observes that the country of approx. 1.42 billion people have only 148 active airports. Due to the rapid expansion of India’s civil aviation sector, several airports in the country have already reached saturation and are handling passengers in excess of their maximum indicative capacity and parking bays and runaway slots are getting scarcer,” the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Petitions headed by Sujeet Kumar, MP Rajya Sabha said in its Report.

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The report “Modernization of Airports by Airports Authority of India” was presented to the Rajya Sabha on Friday.

“Despite India being the world’s fastest growing aviation market, the country’s airport expansion is yet to gain the desired pace which is hindering India’s booming air travel demand and aviation growth,” it said.

“Therefore a steadfast airport capacity augmentation is the need of the hour,” it stated.

The Committee welcomed that the government’s plans to boost airport infrastructure which is certain to bring a huge amount of economic upside, it said, adding, the Committee however “notes that development of airport infrastructure projects are highly capital intensive in nature and also have a long gestation period and they have suffered from long delays in the past on account of key approvals and land acquisition issues,” as per the release.

The Committee therefore recommends that the “Government should proactively obtain all pre-project clearances and complete the planned airports in a time bound manner and obviate the possibility of cost escalation and time overruns,” as per the release.

On the regional connectivity scheme, UDAN, the Committee observed that the mere awarding of routes under UDAM does not make them functional.

“It is true that the Scheme has been able to promote regional and remote area air connectivity to a significant extent, it is still grappling with multiple issues ranging from lack of demand on a sustained basis all round the year, high operating costs, licenses of operators getting stripped off due to difficulty to start operations for more than a year, delay in securing necessary regulatory approvals, etc,” it said.

“It is thus evident that operationalisation of the awarded routes faces challenges of their own. The Committee therefore recommends that the Government should put in place a robust monitoring mechanism and ensure that the challenges facing the awarded routes are addressed expeditiously and the targeted routes under the RCS are operationalized within their designated timelines,” as per the official statement,”