Recent amendments to the Airports Authority of India Regulations (2000) are expected to have wide-ranging impacts on airports in India, including ground handling. According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the need for policy change was necessitated by restructuring of certain airports, the emergence of few greenfield airports and the need to improve efficiency and service.
The 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 changes will throw open these services to local and foreign companies through a competitive bidding process and will allow up to three ground handling services to operate at any metropolitan airport in the country.
Currently, ground handling at the airports is provided by Airports Authority of India (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 off er the services.
While private airlines will be allowed to do their own ground handling, foreign airlines will not be allowed to do so.