SC orders status quo on ground handling at six airports

The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered status quo on the dispute over ground handling in the six major airports in the country and posted the case for final hearing in July. There will be no change in the present arrangement till the final decision of the court.

On the appeal of the Federation of Indian Airlines, the court had last month allowed flight operators to continue the earlier arrangement with certain conditions. According to that order, “the airlines shall be entitled to renewal of passes on the ground handling staff subject to their entering into a memorandum of understanding with any ground handling agency.” This arrangement is to continue, which was what the airlines wanted for the moment.

The airlines, like Jet Airways, Kingfisher and Indigo earlier challenged the new policy by the Airport Authority of India before the Delhi high court. But their petitions were dismissed.

According to the new regime, drafted in 2007, and postponed two times, private airlines were not allowed to do ground handling through outsourcing. They were asked to do the job through government-approved agencies.

The new rules covered mainly the six metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai. At present each airline has its own ground handling staff.

Solicitor General G0pal Subramanium stated the rules were drafted because of the security concerns and to improve the efficiency at airports through competition.

The government argued before a bench consisting of Justice R V Raveendran and Justice A K Patnaik that at present there are some 50 ground handling agencies with nearly a 1,000 staff handling ground operations like cargo handling and basic facilities to passengers. It was difficult to regulate the huge numbers.

The new policy was conceived in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and problems like the existence of slums near Mumbai airport. The ground handling agents employed by private airlines have also contributed to the rise in accidents at airports, government counsel said.

The airlines contended they were bound to ensure security and were supervised by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security.