New Delhi: The government has decided to defer its policy to privatise ground services like passenger check-ins and baggage handling at airports following protests by the staff of state-run Air India and the Airports Authority of India.

"The government has decided to defer the exit of all non-entitled entities from all ground handling operations at the six metro airports to Dec 31, 2009," an official statement said Wednesday.

This, the statement added, was being done to ascertain the readiness of airport operators and streamline the policy to achieve world-class standards of ground handling at airports and address the concerns of all stakeholders.

In February 2007, the government had approved a new ground handling policy, deciding to hand over ground handling facilities at airports at the six metro airports to the National Aviation Co. of India and two other agencies.

The two agencies could have either the airport operator or its joint venture, or any other agency selected through global competitive bidding.

At other airports, in addition to these entities, the domestic airlines were permitted self-handling of their airport services.

"After the announcement of the policy in 2007, the ministry of civil aviation received a number of representations regarding large-scale loss of employment of airline personnel in metro airports for ground handling," said the statement.

Airlines had also represented about the loss of investment made in ground handling and other related equipment and wished to continue with the services that required passenger interface such as facilitation of passenger check-ins that impact service standards.

"The airlines had also complained about the high charges of ground handling agencies."

Wednesday's announcement puts a question mark on the 50:50 joint venture on ground handling that the state-run carrier had entered into with Singapore Airport Terminal Services.

The venture had even bagged a Rs.99-crore (Rs.990 million) cargo handling and a Rs.73-crore (Rs.730-million) ground handling project for Bangalore, and a Rs.80-crore (Rs.800-million) ground handling contract for Hyderabad.

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