No chaos at major airports as other ground handlers step in
A recent government rule impacted operations of Turkiye's Celebi at nine Indian airports. Existing ground handling agencies stepped in to manage the workload. GMR Group made alternate arrangements at Goa's Mopa airport. Over 10,000 Celebi employees were absorbed by other handlers like Bird Group and AISATS. Operations have stabilized with no major disruptions.
NEW DELHI: The govt rule mandating that airports handling over a crore passengers annually have at least three
ground handling agencies
(GHA) meant that flights and passengers at majority of the nine airports from where Turkiye's Celebi was barred on Thursday were not affected.
Other ground handlers equally handled their share of the job Celebi was doing. This is an interim arrangement and airport operators will now issue tenders inviting bids for a third GHA.
The exceptions included Goa (Mopa), where the Turkish company was the only JV and where the
GMR Group
has made alternate arrangements for now. The other eight airports — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Cochin — asked the other GHAs to chip in.
Among the leading GHAs in India are
Air India Airport Services
Ltd (AIASL), Air India SATS Airport Services (AISATS), Bird Group's Bird Flight Services (BFS) and Agile Airport Services (of IndiGo). 'Air India and IndiGo mostly do their own self-handling through these companies. Other GHAs cater to smaller domestic and international airlines. In Delhi, for instance, non-airline GHAs may be handling 1-1.5 crore passengers annually. This keeps reducing for other airports. When the
Bureau of Civil Aviation Security
(BCAS) order of Thursday revoked security clearance to Celebi and its associated companies, airport operators reached out to us and asked us to do Celebi's job for some time,' said a leading non-airline GHA.
The handover from Celebe was completed within 24 hours, say people in the know. 'The over 10,000 employees of Çelebi have been absorbed across interim handlers. About 35-40% of them have joined Bird Group, while the rest have been placed with AISATS and AIASL. There have been no job losses,' said another ground handler.
Barring a few hiccups — mostly administrative and linked to communicating now with people who overnight came onto their rolls — GHAs say 'operations have stabilised and there are no reported
flight delays
or passenger disruption'.
'Till a third GHA is appointed, existing handlers will operate in a non profit, support-only capacity to ensure service continuity and regulatory compliance. We are stretched but in national interest will do the job as long as it is required to be done...,' they said.
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