No common ground for new policy

New Delhi: The government’s new ground handling policy has left the airline industry divided. While established full-service carriers, Jet Airways and Air Sahara, are keen to manage ground handling on their own, low-cost carriers are in favour of outsourcing and want adequate competition among service providers to keep their costs down.
Jet has close to 5,000 employees involved in various ground handling activities while Air Sahara has around 2,000 people on their rolls.
The government’s new policy comes into effect from January 1, 2009,at six major airports - Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. As per the new policy, there will be three ground handlers at each airport - the airport operator or its subsidiary, a subsidiary of Air India and Indian and a ground handler selected through competitive bidding process.
Both Jet Airways and Air Sahara on Friday requested the ministry of civil aviation to allow them to handling their own ground operations.
If unsuccessful, they may have to lay off people.
Most new airlines such as Air Deccan, Kingfisher and SpiceJet have already outsourced a large part of their ground handling activities and feel that the new policy will help to further grow the Rs 1,000-crore ground handling business in the country with proactive private sector participation.
04/02/07 Economic Times

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Categories: airports feb 2007, General Aviation feb 2007