Soon the whole range of ground handling services at airports including aircraft handling, aircraft servicing, cleaning, loading and unloading will change.
DGCA has revised the eligibility criteria for agencies that undertake the services at different airports
Soon the whole range of ground handling services at airports including aircraft handling, aircraft servicing, cleaning, loading and unloading, emplaning and deplaning of the passengers from the aircraft along with cargo handling will change.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has revised the eligibility criteria for agencies, which undertake ground-handling services at different airports. Even the number of agencies engaged in ground handling services at each airport will increase.
The agencies would be selected through a competitive bidding process. Necessary amendments have been made in the Airports Authority of India Regulations (2000) to accommodate the changes.
According to the DGCA, the need for policy change was necessitated by restructuring of certain airports and emergence of few greenfield airports.
The intent of bringing about a change in the policy framework for ground handling services at airports was made clear in February this year when a cabinet committee meeting on security gave the go-ahead to throw open these services to competitive bidding and allow three ground handling services.
Currently, ground handling at the airports is provided by AAI, Air India and any other agency licensed by the AAI. Under the revised policy, all metropolitan airports can either have the airport operator itself or its joint venture (JV) partner providing for ground handling services. Subsidiary companies of the national carrier or their joint ventures specialising in ground handling services would also be allowed to offer the services.
In case the airport operator chooses to provide the services along with a third party, the system would be based on revenue sharing with airport operator subject to satisfactory observance of performance standards.
Private airlines however can do their own ground handling but foreign airlines would not be allowed to do so.
There can also be other ground handling service providers which would be selected through competitive bidding, subject to security clearance by the government.
The number of agencies thus has been increased to two instead of one as is the case with Cambata Aviation Private limited at the Mumbai airport.
The move according to industry experts will open up this segment to international competition and thereby allow the passengers to avail of service standards, compared to the globally best.
This will also improve overall efficiency of passenger transit and aircraft handling.
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