Calcutta airport fails to make enough business

The international lounge at Calcutta airport: Not enough business"It is the best airport in the country. It is fully equipped, it is beautifully designed and a far better place than Palam or Santa Cruz." That is V. Mani of Air-India waxing eloquent on the subject of Calcutta airport. Yes, but facts are facts: only 12 international flights operate from the airport every week and the only one to originate from Calcutta is the Air-India Wednesday flight to New York; only nine international carriers use it - including Air-India and Bhutan's Druk Air - which compares poorly with the 31 using Bombay and the 21 using Delhi; and the international section of the airport of the most populous city in India, one which ranks number two on the industrial map, is used only four hours out of 24. In fact, as Mani says, Air-India has a busier schedule in Trivandrum and Amritsar.The depressing fact that international carriers don't very much care for Calcutta's "beautifully designed" airport is made obvious from the situation there on some days, when there are yawning gaps between one flight and the next. On Wednesdays, for example, the Indian Airlines flight to Dhaka takes off at 4.20 p.m. and there is no activity until 11.40 p.m. when an Air-India flight comes in, leaving a gap of over seven hours. Admits A.V. Anand, regional general manager of the International Airports Authority of India (IAAI): "There is a lot of unutilised capacity here. I have a staff strength of 950 working in rotation and for most of them there isn't much to do. I cannot blame them for the simple reason that we cannot provide them with more work. After all, I can't ask the sweeper to go on sweeping the floors when there is nobody to dirty them."Lowered Status: Interested persons from Calcutta and the region have, however, felt that the airport's plight was man-made. It was recently the subject of an acrimonious exchange of views between the Tourism and Civil Aviation Ministry, which had brought out a "status report" on the airport's problems, and Niren Ghosh, MP, who sent a rejoinder to the minister, Khursheed Alam Khan. The status paper attributed the decline in Calcutta's international air traffic to, among other things, the higher operational capacity of aircraft engines, which allow them to overfly Calcutta. It also said that the Government could not "exercise any positive control" on airlines' choices of points of call.Ghosh, writing on behalf of 81 MP's who had submitted a memorandum on the subject last year, dismissed the status paper as so much eyewash. Did technological advancement dictate that only the Calcutta portion of the flight be done away with, he asked and added that, as regards the Government's clout in the matter, foreign carriers had told him confidentially, that being guests in India, "they have perforce to follow the wishes of the Government of India".He recounted the story of how SAS was forced to wait for-four years for permission to fly Copenhagen-Karachi-Calcutta-Singapore - it already flew Copenhagen-Karachi-Calcutta-Bangkok-Manila in 1978. By the time it got the nod in July 1982, it had already withdrawn its flights. He pointed out that British Airways had consistently shifted flights from Calcutta to Delhi and had recently reduced its twice-a-week service to once a week.Diminished Traffic: But the point that British Airways and other carriers seek to make by shifting their Jumbos from Calcutta to Delhi or Bombay is that there is just not enough business in Calcutta. British Airways, in fact, is even now thinking of closing down its Calcutta office. Ten years ago, when the airport served 40 international flights a week. Air France, Lufthansa, Pan Am and Swissair were all present. Now, of the big names, only British Airways and SAS operate.Statistics collected by the IAAI show that there was an increase of about 18,000 people in the number of passengers who boarded international flights from Calcutta between April and October this year over the corresponding period last year. British Airways, SAS and the IAAI dismiss this as of "no significance". Says Anand: "This increase is certainly not a trend. It can be attributed to various temporary causes."Anand refutes the suggestion that the airlines have been persuaded to delete Calcutta from their schedules. Says he: "As per the bilateral system you cannot stop a foreign airline from operating from Calcutta if it so desires. In that case the country to which the airline belongs can also make things difficult for Air-India. And no airlines have come to me saying that they were being denied permission to operate from Calcutta or expand services here."Vanishing Business: According to travel agencies, about 250 people from Calcutta board international flights from Bombay or Delhi every month. Roy Biswas of the Travel Corporation of India says: "The number of passengers is not so big as to attract international companies to operate more flights on a regular basis." He does complain, though, that his company has to organise its package tours - about 12 between May and September, each tour consisting of about 40 persons - from Bombay or Delhi "because of the paucity of flights here".Ironically, a new domestic lounge is in the pipeline and when that comes up the present structure will house only the international section. Admits Anand: "If the new terminal building comes up and traffic remains as usual then I will be surrounded by an even bigger emptiness all around." Mani says that they have plans for Calcutta and hope "the day returns when this place again becomes the busiest airport in the nation". If the diminishing whine of jet engines at Calcutta is any indication that day is not going to come for a long time.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Feb 3, 2014 00:00 IST--- ENDS ---

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Calcutta airport fails to make enough business

The depressing fact that international carriers don't very much care for Calcutta's "beautifully designed" airport is made obvious from the situation there on some days, when there are yawning gaps between one flight and the next.

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