Pil seeking to include Madurai airport in the BASA agreement

A PIL seeking to including Madurai airport as one of the "Point of Call" in the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) was admitted at the Madras High court bench here today.
A Division Bench comprising Justice N Paulvasanthakumar and Justice P Devadoss ordered notice to the officials including the Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Director General of Civil Aviation, Chairman, Airports Authority of India, and Director AAI, returnable within two weeks.
The petitioner one J Mahendra Varman said a number of foreign carriers were interested in operating flights to Madurai. But the Aviation Ministry were not inviting them, he said.

"Under BASA Agreement between ASEAN countries, 18 airports had been included that would enable the foreign airlines to operate flights. However, some airports in the list did not have customs handling facility. There was high potential and patronage to operate flights from Madurai. Hence the court should direct to include Madurai airport in the BASA agreement and allow foreign air lines to operate flights", he said.
Air Asia of Malayasia, Silk Air of Singapore and Air Arabia approached the Indian government to operate flights from here. However the government had given consent to Indian companies to operate flight to foreign countries, he said.

But Indian companies, including Jet Airways, Indigo and Air India were not showing interest to operate their flights. According to a statistics provided by Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation, 1356 passengers from gulf, Singapore and USA visited Madurai every day, he claimed.

The government had spent Rs 130 crore for upgrading the airport. But the airport was being listed under loss making air ports, he said.
The government should allow foreign companies to operate flights or encourage companies in Indian to operate services to
Dubai, Singapore and other countries, he said.