Aviation; Not Clear for Take-Off

India Today
October 12,1998

AIRPORTS
Not Cleared for Take-Off

Hundreds of unused airstrips go to seed even as the Government invites private investment in airports.

By Samar Halarnkar with Bharat Desai, Robin Abreu and Ruben Banerjee

Farmers plough their fields. Women hang out the wash. And the buffaloes roam. Just another day in bucolic Bihar, you think. Actually, you are standing bang in the middle of Gaya airport.

Gaya hasn't handled a flight since 1994 when, with much fanfare, a state-owned UP Airways plane landed there. The airport building was renovated, crash tenders and ambulances were brought in. That inaugural flight was also the last flight. Its promoters decided there wasn't enough response.

Today, only 6,000 ft of the 9,000 ft runway, long enough to handle jet aircraft, is usable. The window and door frames of the terminal building have been stolen. Army drivers from a nearby base love to drag down the concrete strip. Three Ambedkar and Lohia Nagars have sprung up on airport land; former chief minister Laloo Yadav himself inaugurated one of these villages. Airport officers who protested were threatened with arrest. An occasional state government aircraft carrying sundry ministers sputters in once in a while, but the Bihar Government refuses to pay landing and parking fees. Actually, they haven't paid a paisa to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) since 1953.

The Union Government now wants commercial flights to Gaya where 80,000 tourists, mostly from Japan and Korea, come on pilgrimage to the place where Buddha attained enlightenment. But if commercial flights are to land at Gaya airport, at least Rs 30 crore is needed, money the AAI -- which needs to cough up more than Rs 500 crore for new facilities in Mumbai, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Delhi -- doesn't have.

As tourism and business demand better aviation facilities, the pressure on airports is growing. "We are inviting private investments into the airports on a priority basis," says Civil Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar. He's willing to allow anyone with the money, even municipal corporations, to get a 74 per cent stake in airport projects, and in special cases, total ownership. Unlike the paranoia about airline ownership, foreign investment isn't a problem here.

The thing is, India has no shortage of airports. There are an astounding 456 of them. Like Gaya, there are about 145 airports that lie disused or have been abandoned. It would, say experts, make eminent sense to take stock before going on another spree of costly construction.

Admittedly, some of India's disused and abandoned airports are no more than solitary strips of clipped grass. But there are many with solid concrete runways -- some with twin runways -- long enough to take jet aircraft. Some were built during World War II by the British. Others were built during a misplaced outpouring of political extravagance and munificence to cater to the failed airline Vayudoot in the '80s. Slapdash inauguration of flights preceded equally quick shutdowns.

Airports are prime publicity exercises for politicians and the promise of an airport in their constituencies is de rigueur, never mind that an existing airstrip is never far away from any Indian town. Consider a question posed a couple of months ago by a member of Parliament about the possibility of an airport for the West Bengal beach resort of Digha. That could be justifiable -- if it were not for the fact that there are already seven airports within a radius of 150 km from Digha, four long enough to take jet aircraft, two of these with twin runways.

There is a chicken-and-egg syndrome at work in utilising these lost airports. Before aircraft return to their deserted runways, they need money to instal modern navigational aids and build infrastructure. That money could come from private and public organisation under the new guidelines, but only if flights begin. But unless these facilities are in place, the aircraft won't come. "We were planning a regional airline to tourist spots such as Shirdi, Ajanta, Ellora, but let them develop the airports first," says a highly placed source in Jet Airways, India's largest private airline.

Now in one of the first attempts to utilise defunct airports, the Maharashtra State Industrial Development Corporation has floated a company to restart airports at Ratnagiri, Jalgaon, Latur and Amravati -- all airstrips presently controlled by the state Government. The Government intends to go a step further and build 10 new airports. "The aim is to link the industrial hubs and the entire hinterland with the capital," says K. Jadhav, additional director of industries.

But such airports could easily join their hundreds of dead and dying counterparts. Only three months ago, mounting losses forced the Government of Maharashtra to shut down its regional airline, Span Air. The airports it served will now be mothballed.

And so many of India's obscure airports have receded to the peripheries of towns and cities -- and of public memory, breeding grounds for all manner of vagaries and absurdities. Lone chowkidars wait for aircraft that never come. Cricket on the runways, pumpkins in the taxiways.

The Orissa Government maintains 12 airstrips. At Birasal in Dhenkanal district, an engineer drops by to check the cropping of grass, the reinforcing of the barbed wire. Only, no plane has landed there in eight years. In Bihar airstrip takeover is rife. Children play cricket and football on the Bhagalpur runway. In Raxaul, farmers grow wheat and pumpkin in the breezy open land. "It is wiser to buy helicopters and land anywhere rather than maintain these airports," says Captain Avinash Kumar Sinha, secretary, civil aviation.

Many of India's lost airports were originally constructed to take short-range propeller-driven planes. "Passengers had to wait in the open and scan the skies for the approaching aircraft," says Captain A. Mathur, former managing director of Air-India. Little has changed today.

In Orissa and Bihar, state aircraft and chartered planes are the only visitors to the forgotten airstrips. Every time an aircraft is due, messages are sent to the district collector. The police arrive, drive out cattle and cordon off the area. Safety standards are woefully lacking, as are modern navigational aids. There are no radars here to track aircraft, no radio beacons to guide them.

Yet Bihar's politicians are prolific fliers. Unsafe airports do not deter them. The state Government owns three planes and two helicopters, probably more than any other state. It also owns more than 30 of the 40 airstrips, definitely more than any other state. Here in India's back alleys, there are unlikely to be any takers for Kumar's new policy. The lost airports will remain lost -- except, of course, to its politicians.

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