A very important meeting organised by Director - Civil Aviation of Gujarat State Government wherein Honourable Minister - Civil Aviation Shri Pusapathy Raju and his team from Civil Aviation Department and also from Airport Authority of India were present, where the Airport Directors of all airports in Gujarat, and the important Air Services providers like Air India, Jet Airways, IndiGo, Vistara, GoAir, and others were represented by their senior persons. For discussing all aspects of Aviation problems including Land, Airport Infrastructure, Air Connectivity and development problems like international airport, cargo terminal, MRO Centres, were all focus of discussion. Gujarat Govt was all set to take up the problems of Civil Aviation with the Central Govt, and lead by our Civil Aviation Minister - Shri Saurabhbhai Patel accompanied by the Officers from the State Civil Aviation Ministry and put up all the requirements in a full fledged manner and the Central Ministry as well as the air servce providers were called upon to address points raised. It was heartening to note that SGCCI was specially invited to discuss the problem of aviation activities at the Surat Airport. President Mahendrabhai Katargamwala attended the meeting alongwith Vice President Chandrakant Jariwala and Aviation Committee Chairman Rajnikant Marfatia. The Honourable Minister of Gujarat very strongly advocated for more international airports in Gujarat, particularly considering the GDP figures, the employment generated, and exports. In this scenario, He pointedly asked to justify the availability of only one international airport in Gujarat compared to many more in neighbouring and other states. He suggested to declare and develop SURAT and Baroda as international airports.He also asked regarding the employment of personnel from Gujarat State in the Civil Aviation Ministry, and he also asked the air service providers to clarify why more international flights are not operated from Gujarat airports, where the foreign airlines were ready to provide services. He also put forward the proposed plan for development of MRO activities at various airports in Gujarat. All the pending problems pertaining to Surat Airport were discussed and were very well presented by the SGCCI Aviation Committee Chairman, particularly regarding Connectivity despite present limitations of the runway, the setup of Cargo Terminal, and proposed MRO activities at Surat Airport. The extension and recarpreting of present runway were already decided, and hence needed no discussion except for speeding up the planned work. The case for the Cargo Terminal has been accepted and formalities are underway. The Honourable Minister Shri Saurabhbhai had already advocated for having international airport at Surat, while SGCCI put forward a strong case for having MRO activities at Surat which was not in consideration in the state plan despite our 4 year old proposal. The state Govt was surprised regarding the proposal which justifies the potentiality for MRO Centre at Surat. The Civil Aviation Minister Pusapathy Raju repeatedly mentioned about the water body problems around the Surat Airport and wanted the community to exert social pressure for removal of ponds in the vicinity of the airport to spare the problems of bird hitting the planes. We had clarified that the Surat Collectorate is keen to remove it at a stroke; however the Supreme Court stay has tied up our hands. Regarding connectivity, the airlines raised the problem of traffic availability, which SGCCI has clarified in no uncertain terms that the statistics released by the Central Govt clearly indicates a good traffic density growing at 20% annually, and the arguments by the airlines are ill founded. In fact, the charges from Surat to Delhi are more than 150% of charges from Baroda to Delhi, where a good number of passengers from Surat board the Delhi flight from Baroda. Hence there is full justification in connecting Surat with Delhi both ways and will not prove to be loss making to any of the airlines. The Minister also suggested to consider new routes other than the direct metro routes to provide connectivity, suggesting Surat - Mumbai - Bangalore, Surat - Pune - Hyderabad, Surat - Delhi - Kolkata and such circular routes. SGCCI was impressed to see the Honourable Minister Civil Aviation - Shri Pusapathy Raju spending 2 hours in a calm and cool manner encouraging every stakeholder to represent their problems, and evolve a solution in a very cordial atmosphere. He has assured to visit Surat in response to Chamber Presidents invitation.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 10:25:51 +0000
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