Airport Capacity And The Modern Infrastructure Changes

Introduction:

The developments in India have been quite remarkable. Privatisation has changed the face of airports and / or air travel in India.

Why privatise:

Two reasons: Airport infrastructure is capital intensive and associated with a long payback period. Moreover, the world over, international airports rely on over 50% of their revenues coming from non-aeronautical resources. The Government and the Government owned PSUs are ill-suited to harness this potential of the non-aeronautical revenues (such as hotels, passenger amenities, entertainment venues, retail etc).

All this led the Indian Government to embark upon privatisation and surely it is a move which could not have brooked any further delay. Before privatisation the Indian airports were bursting at their seams. For instance, the old airport at Delhi had a capacity to handle 12 million passengers per annum but it was handling over 20 million passengers per annum.