AAI committed to develop more airports in NE

GUWAHATI: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has reiterated its commitment to the Centre’s Look East Policy in regard to development of more airports in the Northeast.

“The AAI is committed to invest and develop all other airports in the North Eastern Region in line with national civil aviation plan and the regional connectivity scheme here,” Vineet Gulati, member, Air Navigation Services, AAI, told the media here on Saturday.

Gulati was here to inaugurate the regional training centre for Air Navigation Service (ANS) professionals at the regional headquarters, North Eastern Region here.

AAI being the largest airport operator and Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) in India, has been providing the Aeronautical Telecommunication Services (part of Global Aviation Telecommunication Network) including the Aeronautical Fixed Services (AFS) to manage its civil aviation requirements in order to ensure safe and expeditious air transportation system.

“This facility will add value because a lot of airports are coming up where we need people who are trained. It has been set up in record time and will have an impact on training of ANS professionals across Northeast,” he said.

Along with the RTC, an IP-based automatic message switching system was also inaugurated here.

The aviation sector has witnessed rapid growth in the late 1990s and beginning of this century, a huge pool of trained CNS personnel (now known as Air Traffic Safety Electronics Personnel worldwide) was required to install, commission, operate, maintain and upgrade the safety critical air traffic management systems.

In order to meet the high density of air traffic over the Indian airspace, AAI had embarked in the deployment of vital communication, navigation and surveillance equipment on major and minor airports based on latest technology.

To augment the training need to meet the growing demand, four regional training centres – Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai were established in the late 1990s. Thereafter, the training needs of the North-Eastern Region was catered to by the Kolkata RTC (Eastern Region).