Adani Group to takeover Ahmedabad, Lucknow & Mangaluru airports by November 7

NEW DELHI: The Adani Group will take over the operation and management of Mangaluru, Lucknow and Ahmedabad airports on October 31 and November 2 and 7, respectively, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) announced on Thursday. Citing the pandemic, the group had sight time to take over the airports and AAI had asked it to do so by November 12.
Adani Group is also likely to take over Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), and the upcoming Navi Mumbai Airport, before the year-end where it is acquiring a controlling stake from outgoing promoter GVK Group.It has won the bid to operate, manage and develop six AAI airports — Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram — the PPP way for 50 years. The process of taking over Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram will soon be completed.
The aviation ministry signed three MoUs with the concessionaires — Adani Ahmedabad International Airport Ltd, Adani Lucknow International Airport Ltd and Adani Mangaluru International Airport Ltd — on Thursday for provision of services like customs, immigration, plant and animal quarantine, health, met and security (collectively called reserved services). AAI has also signed three separate communications, navigation and surveillance systems for air traffic management with these concessionaires for services at these three airports.
With eight airports — including the mega hit of Mumbai — under its belt, Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani had last month spoken about a hub and spoke model .
“…We see airports as a powerful engine to drive local economic development as well as act as a critical lever to help converge the tier 1 cities with the tier 2 and tier 3 cities in a hub and spoke model. This hub and spoke model is fundamental to enable a greater equalisation of our increasing urban – rural divide as well as take advantage of the cost arbitrage that exists between the different locations to make us more competitive as a nation. This is critical for the creation of net new jobs. Given our deep infrastructure expertise, we are well positioned to help make this happen,” Gautam Adani had said in a statement last month.
The concession agreements for operations, management and development of Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru Airports through PPP mode were signed on February 14, 2020. But the pandemic delayed the taking over of these airports by Adani Group.