AI venture with Singapore takes off

New Delhi: Air India has joined hands with ground handler Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS) to form a 50:50 joint venture company, which will take over their three existing ground and cargo handling joint ventures in Bangalore and Hyderabad.
The new venture, to be named Air India SATS Airport Services, will be incorporated in Delhi and is expected to be completed next month.
The plan to spin off Air India’s ground and cargo handling into a single entity has been in the offing for some time and the state-run flagship carrier has faced strikes by employees protesting the plan.
The joint venture was planned two years back after the government changed ground handling rules at airports, limiting the number of ground handlers at airports to just three. The new rules were, however, kept in abeyance but would kick in from next year.
Air India may spin off more joint ventures in non-core areas such as engineering, sources said.
Airline unions had earlier described the joint venture as a “backdoor attempt to privatise”.
However, AI top brass today said they expected unions to work in tandem with them as “all of us realise we are merely trying to be realistic in the face of new rules limiting the number of competitors in the ground handling business”. The number of ground handlers are being curbed keeping security considerations in view.
18/04/10 The Telegraph

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Categories: Foreign Apr 2010, NACIL Apr 2010