Cabinet to take up proposal for two or more airports in metros

New Delhi, Nov 13 (UNI) The Union Cabinet will soon take up a Civil Aviation Ministry proposal to have more than one international airport in a metro city to decongest air trafic.

''The Ministry feels that more infrastructure is required in the metros in terms of airports, and we have moved a proposal. The Cabinet will decide on it,'' Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told reporters at the Economic Editors' Conference here today.

''We need more airports. The present is difficult, and the future is in absolute jeopardy if we do not increase the infrastructure,'' Mr Patel said.

He said the Mumbai Airport was highly congested, and the congestion would not decrease unless there was another international airport.

''We have to live with this situation for the next 2-3 years,'' he added.

Regarding air congestion at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, he said it would come to an end after May 2008 when the second runway became operational.

For setting up greenfiled airports, he said a policy was likely to be finalised in a couple of months, and would be in place by next year.

The policy aims at providing guidelines for granting technical approvals by various agencies involved in setting up an airport.

He said the country's aviation sector was in for a big boom with the number of aircraft in the fleet of scheduled passenger airline operators expected to increase to more than 1,000 in the next ten years from the present 300 plus.

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