Maharashtra to draft air transport improvement plan

The Maharashtra government will complete drafting a master plan for the development of airports within a fortnight. With the growth of the air transport industry, the Maharashtra Airport Development Corporation (MADC) will formulate a policy to upgrade the infrastructure at airports. The draft would include a perspective development plan for the next 20 years, said Nandkumar Jantre, vice-chairman and managing director of MADC. The official added that one of the objectives of the policy would be to provide airports with the infrastructure to handle increased traffic volume. MADC has identified 29 potential sites for the development of new or upgraded airports. Some of the sites where new airports have been planned are Navi Mumbai, Amravati, Jalgaon, Solapur, Shirdi, Rajgurunagar near Pune and Chippi-Parule in Sindhudurg district. Jantre said that they would decide on which project to take up first. The plan will not only talk about the various financial models that can be used, but it will also examine the techno-economic feasibility of setting up new airports near some of the established ones. Another important focus area of the master plan will be to suggest guidelines for the improvement of customer facilities at airports, besides measures for flyers’ security. The plan will also weigh the possibility of providing multimodal transport system to improve connectivity. “There is a plan to connect the Navi Mumbai airport to a proposed Metro station. Similar multimodal options could be explored at other airports too,” Jantre added.