Government on Thursday gave its nod to a wide-ranging policy to create international and regional aviation hubs in the country in the coming days to cater to the growing passenger traffic.
As creation of a hub requires establishment of facilities like immigration, customs, provisions for visa-on-arrival and foreign exchange involving various ministries, an inter- ministerial committee would be created to facilitate the setting up of such hubs in major cities.
Terming the approval of the policy by the Union Cabinet as "a major infrastructure initiative", Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tiwari said "an inter-ministerial committee will be formed to work out the modalities. They have been tasked to do that at the earliest."
An aviation hub is an airport which is used as an intermediate point to transfer air travellers from their original destination to their final destination. In aviation parlance, this is called 'hub-and-spoke' operation.
The policy, approved today, not only focuses on developing global hubs in India but also on establishing domestic regional hubs to cater to the growing air traffic from non-metro destinations in remote areas, including the Northeast, official sources said.
India should take advantage of its geographical and locational suitability for foreign carriers connecting Europe to Southeast Asia or vice versa, official sources said, adding creating ultra-modern airports to cater to rising global traffic would have to be a top priority.
Simultaneously, the government has been according high priority to provide air connectivity to remote, difficult and interior areas of the country and focussing on building and modernising airports in Tier-II and Tier-III cities.
Such connectivity would have to be customer-friendly and, therefore, affordable for passengers and lower cost of operation for the airlines, the sources said, adding the Airports Authority of India has also been looking at developing low-cost airports in smaller cities andtowns.