Government plans dedicated cargo airports across India

Government plans dedicated cargo airports across India

After giving green signal to dedicated cargo carriers, the civil aviation ministry is seriously considering setting up dedicated cargo airports across the country. "Various companies from central India have expressed their interest to build cargo airports. These are not just for captive purpose but for handling general cargo too," said a senior civil aviation ministry official.

Reliance Industries, for example, has proposed cargo airport at Jhajjar for to handle the cargo generated in its Special Economic Zone. He said the government is in the process of finalising its policy on cargo airports. "The picture will be clear shortly for these projects.

The union civil aviation ministry wants to carry out a study to estimate the impact of the proposed greenfield project on the cargo facilities at the Delhi airport.

Industry sources say that Indian airports fall far behind in terms of cargo facilities. While the Frankfurt Airport in Germany handles, 5,200 metric tonnes of cargo per day, much more than what an Indian airport handles in one month.
For example, the only cargo carrier Blue Dart has serious infrastructure problems in the seven airports that it operates from. The carrier was allotted only same space though its cargo carrying capacity increased by many-fold.
The modern airports have also increased their rentals for cargo handling space thereby making increasing operational costs for the operators.

"The dedicated cargo airport will be a solution to these problems," the government official said. This is apart from separate initiatives of various airports setting up dedicated cargo handling facilities.

01/09/08 Economic Times


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