AAI received passenger fee of Rs 2,032 cr from six leased airports: Govt

Airports Authority of India (AAI) has received passenger fees totalling about Rs 2,032 crore till June this year from the private partners operating six airports that were leased out in 2019.

The airports at Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram have been leased out to Adani group under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) since 2019.

"Private partners of these airports have paid approximately Rs 2,032 crore to AAI as Per Passenger Fee (PPF) till June 2024.

"AAI has also received an amount of approximately Rs 2,758 crore from the private partners of these six airports in the form of upfront fee towards the capital expenditure incurred by AAI at these airports," Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol told Lok Sabha on Thursday.

According to him, these airports were leased out for better operations, management and development for 50 years.

The minister also said in a written reply that as per the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), 25 AAI airports have been earmarked for leasing over the years 2022 to 2025. "However, this is an indicative list and finalisation is subject to further assessment".

Currently, there are 157 operational airports in the country with the capacity to handle more than 530 million passengers per annum.

In a separate written reply, Mohol said the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued 16,092 aircraft maintenance engineer licenses during the period from 2019 till August 1 this year.

There are 57 Aircraft Maintenance Engineering (AME) training institutes approved to impart maintenance training.