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New guidelines issued on import of aircraft; IA and AA net up in Q1

The government has issued a comprehensive set of guidelines for import of aircraft on short-term wet-lease basis to overcome the sudden shortage of capacity in the domestic air transport operation, according to Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar.

The minister informed a 27-member parliamentary consultative committee meeting in Bombay that to avoid accidents, airborne collision avoidance systems has been made mandatory on all aircraft with seat capacity of 30 or above. And on all turbo-engine propelled aircraft, ground proximity warning systems have been made mandatory effective December 31, 1998.

Kumar, who is also the chairman of the committee, while pointing out that the government was committed to development, modernisation and upgradation of airports, said that Indian Airlines and Alliance Air have together earned a net profit of Rs 113.6 million during April to June 1998, as against the previous year's profit of Rs 54.4 million for the corresponding period.

Mentioning the various steps taken by Air-India management, he said these have yielded good results and the airline's operating revenue increased from Rs 8.85 billion to Rs 10.14 billion and a total revenue of Rs 9.29 billion to Rs 10.46 billion during April to June 1998, as compared to the corresponding period of 1997. During the same period, the passenger load factor also increased to 67.7 per cent from earlier 64.7 per cent.

Participating in the discussion, committee members suggested that the ministry should develop and modernise airports for promotion of tourism. In this connection, members mentioned the airports such as Agra, Aurangabad, Gorakhpur, Gwalior, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Lucknow and Varanasi.

The members said that proper maintenance and utilisation of available infrastructure facilities at the small airports should be ensured. The Airports Authority of India should make cargo services more effective to play an important role in the economic development. In this context, some members demanded upgradation and modernisation of the Bilaspur, Dehradun, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Raipur and Visakhapatnam airports.

Members emphasised to make airports economically viable and operational. They pointed out that at present out of 118 airports, only 75 are operational and most of these are running at a loss.

UNI