Low traffic blamed for airport losses

New Delhi: Despite the travel boom, the airports at Jaipur, Srinagar, Khajuraho, Agra, Port Blair, Jaisalmer, Varanasi and Agatti are in the red.
Varanasi airport located at the city of Taj, Agra, lost Rs 4.6 crore during the year. Jaipur, the other point linking the tourist triangle anchored by Delhi, fared far worse with losses of Rs 12.7 crore. The airports at Kullu, Dehradun and Kangra are also in the red.
The Patna airport lost nearly Rs 11.9 crore in ’04-05, while the Bhopal airport lost Rs 8.8 crore.
The Guwahati airport is among the list of non-profitable airports with losses of Rs 51 crore, followed by Bhubaneshwar with Rs 14.7 crore, Lucknow (Rs 10.8 crore), Thiruvananthapuram (Rs 4.3 crore), Chandigarh (Rs 2.7 crore) Shimla (Rs 2.6 crore) and Ahmedabad (Rs 1.9 crore).
The Safdarjung airport at Delhi, where all flying activity has been banned due to security reasons, lost Rs 7 crore during ’04-05.
The airport at Gaya made losses of Rs 6.4 crore while the Khajuraho airport lost Rs 6.7 crore in ’04-05. The Port Blair airport lost Rs 3.5 crore during the year, while the Jammu airport made a loss of Rs 5.5 crore.
The Nagpur airport lost Rs 29 crore during ’04-05. The Agatti airport made losses to the tune of Rs 13 crore.
The 116 loss-making airports of AAI are sustained through the earnings to 10 profitable airports, which include Delhi and Mumbai that are being shifted to private managements now.
The ministry cites ‘very low traffic’ as the reason for consistent losses at these airports.
15/04/06 G Ganapathy Subramaniam/Economic Times

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