IA fleet not held up: Patel

The process of fleet acquisition by Indian Airlines may not be delayed due to the review of their plans sought by the civil aviation ministry, as the fresh proposal would be taken straight to the Public Investment Board (PIB) as soon as the public sector carrier forwards it.

Asserting that there was "no scrapping" of the IA plans to acquire 43 aircraft, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said, "what we have asked (the IA) is that if they feel, they can carry out a reconfiguration of their plans which were made way back in 1998-99."

At that time, the IA had 10 A-300s which would be phased out in the near future.

"They also did not require any wide-bodied planes then. So they did not have any plan to acquire such aircraft," which they do now keeping in view the requirement for more cargo space, additional space for passenger baggage and new longer routes to fly, he said, while replying to questions.

"We are waiting for them to come back to us with various options. Let them rectify their plans, if required. We will take these plans to the PIB," Patel said, while clarifying that the ministry had not asked the IA to scrap their plans and start afresh.

Scotching speculation that a fresh plan would delay the acquisition process by another two to four years, the minister said, "we have only asked them to review the plans under the changed circumstances and take a holistic view. All they should do is to revisit them."

On restructuring of the Delhi and Mumbai airports, Patel said no date has yet been fixed for the empowered group of ministers' meeting to finalise the shortlist of bidders and decide on calling technical bids.

He said the inter-ministerial group of officials would submit its final report "in a couple of days."

The report is expected to give the final list of bidders who fulfilled all the criteria laid down by the government on the matter. Patel said efforts were being made to complete the process of selecting a joint venture partner for airport modernisation "within this year."

In this regard, the Airports Authority of India, with which the private partners would form two joint venture companies for modernising the Delhi and Mumbai airports, was working on finalising the terms of reference for the bidders as well as the requests for proposal documents, Patel added.