| Own plane and have an airport too! |
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 Charter planes for your exclusive use is passe:How about an airport for yourself?Faced with a problem of celebrity and private jets occupying a large amount of space and runway time at the country's major airports, the Union civil aviation minsitry is floating a new idea:exclusive airports for private jets.Part of the civil aviation ministry's design to decongest major airports by encouraging smaller ones, the exclusive airports are to be promoted with private participation. Civil aviation joint secretary K N Shrivastava said "With the charter services industry growing rapidly in the country, we want to bring in exclusive airports for them. It will be beneficial for all." The win-win situation envisaged by the ministry is-the charter sector will save money by not having to wait in turn for other planes to take off;for big passenger flights, the reduction in traffic once charter planes are out, will result in faster take off time. What has prompted the move is the chronic overcrowding of the New Delhi and Mumbai airports. According to civil aviation ministry figures, of approximately 700 daily flights in New Delhi and Mumbai airports, 140 each are private charters. "These occupy parking space and longer runway time to take off. So for the sake of a few passengers, thousands are held up," Shrivastava pointed out. Even in a smaller airport like Bangalore, which operates approximately 400 daily flights, the number of charters is 15 per day. This is because not just the multinational companies and celebs, but Inidan corporates are also using private chartered flights to reach destinations not on scheduled airline maps or to save time. The ministry is initially looking at exclusive airports for charter jets in New Delhi and Mumbai. While the location is yet to be finalised for New Delhi, plans are on for such an airport at Juhu in Mumbai. As and when the need arises, similar airports will be planned for other metros, officals said. The chartened flights industry has welcomed the move. "A Delhi-Agra flight now takes over an hour because we have spent 45 minutes waiting for the flight to take off from the airport. Either the operator or the client has to bear the cost of this. An exclusive airport would resolve that problem to a great extent,"Anil Kakkar of International Air Charters said.
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