Cargo operations at Chennai’s air cargo terminal were hit from early-May by a work slowdown by staff of the Airport Authority of India. However, there was no disturbance in the handling of passenger and cargo flights, according to Dinesh Kumar, Airport Director, Chennai.
The Southern India Chamber of Commerce and Industry in a press release said the Government has taken care for the passenger movement. But the export/import of cargo was given a lower priority the Chamber said with no staff on duty to receive cargo from the flights or for data entry and to locate the parcels.
The country-wide labour action was a result of the impending closure of the Bangalore airport, but ironically, it was business as usual there because the Defence Ministry-owned airport is handled by HAL’s traffic controllers and not AAI staff, while ground services are managed by the airlines.
The country’s third busiest airport, with annual passenger flows of more than 10 million, sees 315 scheduled flights each day.
The nearly 50-year-old HAL airport is to be closed down when the greenfield project at Devanahalli, built by the Siemens-Unique Zurich-L&T consortium, becomes operational within a month. The closure of this and Hyderabad airports is the main reason for the countrywide strike.