New Delhi: It may sound bizarre. But the fact is that about 24% of the airports operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) are running in profit, while only 21.4% of the airports being run under the private public partnership (PPP) mode by private firms have earned profit in the last fiscal, stated a report tabled by the ministry of civil aviation (MoCA) in Rajya Sabha on Monday.
As many as 14 airports, including those located in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Lucknow and Hyderabad etc are being run and managed by private operators, while the AAI is operating altogether 125 airports across the country.
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Of the total airports run by private companies, only Bangalore, Cochin and Hyderabad have earned profit in the FY 2022-23. After incurring huge losses running in hundreds of crores in the two past years, Bangalore airport has posted profit of ₹528.31 crore profit in FY2022-23, while Hyderabad earned profit of 32.99 crore after suffering losses of ₹259.10 crore in previous two years. Cochin, which earned profit of ₹267.17 crore in the FY22-23, is the only airport, which made financial gains in the previous year too.
Ahmedabad (₹-408.51), Delhi (₹-248.86 crore) and Lucknow (₹-160.66 crore) airports are among the privately managed airstrips which continued to be in the red in the last fiscal as well. Union minister of state for civil aviation VK Singh said that a total of 14 airports in the country are being managed under the PPP mode, which also included Kannur, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Durgapur and Mopa.
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Of the total 125 airports, run and managed by the AAI, 30 are operating in profit. Kolkata, Chenna and Calicut airports are among the lead earners in the FY2022-23, earning profit of ₹482.30 crore, ₹169.56 crore and ₹95.38 crore respectively. Asansol, Bagdogra, Chandigarh, Deoghar, Goa, Faizabad, Kanpur, Leh, Panna, Srinagar, Aizawl, Vishakhapatnam, Darbhanga and Coimbatore are among other AAI run airports operating in profits.
Airports at Patna has posted operating loss of ₹8.56 crore, while Gaya and Ranchi incurred losses of ₹23.47 crore and ₹26.45 crore respectively in the FY2012-23.
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25 more airports to be leased out to private firms
As per National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), 25 AAI airports namely, Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Trichy, Indore, Raipur, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi, Jodhpur, Chennai, Vijayawada, Vadodara, Bhopal, Tirupati, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry have been earmarked for leasing over the years 2022 to 2025.
