The Hindu : Business : Improve airport infrastructure: IATA chief

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 19, 2005

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Business

Improve airport infrastructure: IATA chief

Special Correspondent

Should focus on enhanced safety

— Photo: V. V. Krishnan

TOUGH TASKS: The Chairman and Managing Director of Air India, Thulasidas (left), the Director General, International Air Transport Association, Giovanni Bisignani (centre), and the Chairman and Managing Director of Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallya, at `Aviation in India: Great opportunities and great challenges' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry in New Delhi on Tuesday.

NEW DELHI: Though India is well on the way to all-round expansion of its civil aviation sector, its air transport infrastructure is out of date, the Director-General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Giovanni Bisignani, said on Tuesday.

Speaking at an interactive session on "Aviation in India: Great opportunities and great challenges,'' the IATA chief said though India's expansion of air transport was among the fastest in the world, it needed to do much more to come up to the global standards. If India had to meet the challenge posed by China in civil aviation, it would have to improve the infrastructure at its airports, most of which were not up to international standards, he said.

Spelling out the priorities, Mr. Bisignani said India should focus on enhanced safety, cost-effective improvement of infrastructure, reasonable taxation, allowing the airlines to function as real businesses and effective use of technology to simplify the procedures.

Without getting drawn into the debate on airport privatisation, he said IATA was not interested in who owned the airports but it was concerned that they must be safe and cost-efficient and provide adequate capacity for further growth.

Another area of concern for IATA was the increasing taxation on aviation not only in India but also all over the world. He said IATA was setting deadlines for itself for switching over to e-ticketing by 2007-end resulting in total savings of $3 billion. Globally, airlines were a $400 billion industry.

Earlier, Air India Chairman and Managing Director V. Thulasidas said the airline industry had seen a strong growth momentum in the last couple of years in India.

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