The new Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday formed three committees comprising airlines, airport operators, cargo carriers, ground handling companies, flying training organisations and maintenance, repair and overhaul companies to advise him on critical issues of the sector.
Scindia will himself chair the committees, which will meet once every month to sort out regulatory, financial or other issues. The committees comprise top officials from the Ministry and organisations like Airport Authority of India (AAI), Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India (AERA) and key representatives from the private sector.
Taking to Twitter, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said: “Under the chairmanship of the Honourable Minister of Civil Aviation, Shri Jyotiraditya Scindia, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has formed three advisory groups comprising airlines, airport operators and MRO, cargo carriers, FTOs and ground handling companies.”
The groups shall meet regularly to deliberate upon issues and resolve challenges facing each sector. Orders have been issued for the same,” it added.
According to the ministry, the airline group has among its members three promoters — IndiGo’s Rahul Bhatia, SpiceJet’s Ajay Singh and GoAir’s Ness Wadia; CEO/CMDs — AirAsia India’s Sunil Bhaskaran, Vistara’s Bhaskar Bhat, Air India’s Rajiv Bansal and Alliance Air CEO. This group will advise on issues like how to enhance domestic and international connectivity, improve passenger experience and financial viability of airlines and on regulatory matters.
According to the Aviation Ministry’s order on July 20, the first group would advise the government on issues such as safeguarding the viability of airlines, enhancing the domestic and international connectivity, promotion of passenger and cargo services, manpower skilling in the aviation sector and development of India as a hub for passenger travel, cargo and MRO services.
The second group comprises top officials of major Indian airport operators -- Airports Authority of India Chairman Sanjeev Kumar, GMR Group Business Chairman G B S Raju, Adani Group Vice President Jeet Adani and Bangalore International Airport Limited Chief Executive Officer Hari K Marar.
Another Aviation Ministry’s order stated that the second group would advise the government on issues including enhancing the airport capacity, infrastructure augmentation and modernisation, increasing passenger facilities and amenities at airports and regulatory issues concerning airports.
The group will be meeting every month to suggest steps required to enhance airport capacity, infrastructure modernisation and improving customer experience.
The third advisory group would comprise four sub-groups: one each on MRO, ground handling, cargo and FTO. Each of the sub-group would have four industry executives as members who work in that particular industry.
It will also spell out steps needed to be taken to expand this sector.
Scheduled domestic passenger traffic was suspended in India for about two months between March 25 and May 24 last year due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown. Since June 2020, the domestic traffic had been on a path of recovery when the second wave of the pandemic hit India during April and May this year.