The government today said 75 of the 86 airports were incurring losses with the Guwahati airport topping the list with an over Rs 25 crore loss during 2000-01.
In a reply in the Lok Sabha, civil aviation minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain said the Thiruvananthapuram (Rs 9.96 crore), Nagpur (Rs 9.85 crore) and Lucknow (Rs 9.21 crore) airports were the major loss-incurring ones during the financial year.
Blaming low traffic for the losses, the minister said some of these airports did not even have scheduled operations. Without an increase in traffic, it might not be possible for these airports to earn a profit.
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Meanwhile, to smoothen air traffic operations, the government has decided to introduce a satellite navigation system. It will make India one of the few nations to use such a system.
The decision was taken following the recommendations of a national steering committee comprising representatives from Indian Space Research Organisa-tion, Indian Air Force, and the airline industry, aviation secretary K Roy Paul told a conference on the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) here today.
The need for such a sophisticated system was felt in view of the growing air traffic, which the existing navigational means would not be able to cope with, he said.
He said the government was