40 more cities to be on air map

The Ministry of Civil Aviation is planning to start flights connecting about 120 cities in the country from the current 81 cities, said Praful Patel, Union Minister for Civil Aviation.
Inaugurating the new arrival terminal 1B at the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) at Mumbai, he said the new routes would be announced in near future.
The modernisation and expansion of airports at Banagalore and Hyderabad will be complete by March next year. Once the proposed airports at Navi Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Aurangabad come up by 2011-12, the Centre would open up new routes to these destinations connecting Lathur, Nanded, Amaravati and Akola in Maharashtra, Patel said.
Commenting on the proposed expansion plans of the airport, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh said the rehabilitation of people would be done "with a humanitarian face" while acquiring land for the expansion.
GV Krishna Reddy, chairman, Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (MIAL), said the new terminal was constructed with an expenditure of over Rs 130 crore (Rs 1.3 billion). MIAL has spent over Rs 600 crore (Rs 6 billion) since May 2006 for the upgrade of the airport. It plans to install 11 aerobridges at the CSIA by next year and tenders have been floated, he said.
MIAL is the first public-private partnership in India to maintain airports, a joint venture between the GVK-SA consortium and Airports Authority of India (AAI) to modernise and upgrade the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport(CSIA).
17/09/07 Business Standard/Rediff

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Categories: Airports Sep 2007, New Sep 2007