On March 14, Sonia Gandhi, chairman of India's ruling United Progressive Alliance government at the Center, inaugurated the new private sector airport at Hyderabad in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. It was a false start, though: Several airlines, citing the need for more time to move into the facility, delayed the airport's launch for another week. Just a couple of days earlier, the government in Delhi had asked the country's other high-profile, private sector aviation project -- the Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) -- to postpone its planned March 30 opening until May.

While delays on large projects like these are not unexpected, India's program for privatization of airports has faced opposition from the beginning. On March 12, some 15,000 employees of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), which is responsible for civil aviation infrastructure in the country, went on strike to protest the privatization of the airports in Mumbai and Delhi and the decision to close the currently operational airports in Hyderabad and Bangalore when the new ones opened. Earlier in the month, airport taxi drivers had gone on strike to protest these changes as well.

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Posted by dcjaya at April 4, 2008 8:44 PM