No problems at major airports after Celebi's ban as other ground handlers take responsibility

Majority of the nine airports from where Turkiye's Celbi was banned on Thursday were not affected, thanks to the government rule mandating that airports handling over a crore passengers annually have at least three ground handling agencies (GHA), reported TOI.

Other ground handlers managed the work that Celebi was doing. This is an interim measure and airport operators will now issue tenders inviting bids for a third GHA.

Goa (Mopa) was an exception in this matter as the Turkish company was the only JV. GMR Group has made alternative arrangements for now. The other eight airports, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Cochin, asked the other GHAs to chip in.

Some of the leading GHAs in India are Air India Airport Services Ltd (AIASL), Air India SATS Airport Services (AISATS), Bird Group’s Bird Flight Services (BFS) and Agile Airport Services (of IndiGo).

“Air India and IndiGo mostly do their own self-handling through these companies. Other GHAs cater to smaller domestic and international airlines. In Delhi, for instance, non-airline GHAs may be handling 1-1.5 crore passengers annually. This keeps reducing for other airports. When the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) order of Thursday revoked security clearance to Celebi and its associated companies, airport operators reached out to us and asked us to do Celebi’s job for some time,” said a leading non-airline GHA, to TOI.

The handover from Celebi was done within 24 hours. “The over 10,000 employees of Çelebi have been absorbed across interim handlers. About 35-40% of them have joined Bird Group, while the rest have been placed with AISATS and AIASL. There have been no job losses,” said another ground handler.

There were a few hiccups which were mostly administrative and linked to communicating with people who overnight came onto their rolls. However, GHAs say “operations have stabilised and there are no reported flight delays or passenger disruption”.

“Till a third GHA is appointed, existing handlers will operate in a non profit, support-only capacity to ensure service continuity and regulatory compliance. We are stretched but in national interest will do the job as long as it is required to be done.,” they said.