Karippur continues to be in neglect; political parties fail to intervene

Kondotty: The story of neglect of Karippur airport seems to be unending; when the government owned airport suffers from this, private operators are seeminly granted relaxation in regulations and procedures. Even after Saudia Airlines have come forward to operate direct flights from Karippur to Saudi destinations, the official procedures are getting delayed, apparently deliberately. At the same time, the Centre has declared that grassroots airports can be given exemption to start international flights.

It is a month since the Saudi national airliner submitted its report to the airport authority regarding operating service from Karippur to Jeddah. The airline offer to run the service was contained in the response to the call by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) following the detailed report the airline submitted regarding opreating wide-bodied jets from Karippur. It was the Flight Operating Inspector of DGCA who asked for the new operating procedure from Saudia.

Although the report was submitted, a top level official, who happens to be a Keralite, has been sitting on the file for the past month and a half . Despite the foreign airline coming forward to start flights to Jeddah, where a huge Keralite population are working and living, the authorities have been giving scant regard for matter. And worse, there has not been any effort by the state's political parties to intervene in the matter.

As an example, even when chief minister of Kerala met the Central minister in charge of civil aviation, Suresh Prabhu, he did not broach this subject. Instead, the discussion was focused on land acquisition. Currently, the land acquisition activity of Karippur looks halted. Although it is several months since the state government asked the authority for its report, the latter has not given it so far.

When the main issue is the resumption of medium and large sized aircraft's services, there is word doing the rounds that Karippur has been downgraded. However, it has been only a case of the category of the fire and safety installation being changed from eight to seven. Once large aircraft are given permission, this will naturally be raised to nine. For that purpose, it is enough it Saudia gets clearance for operation.

But what political parties, including CPM, have tried to do was to make an unnecessary strike on this issue as if Karippur has been downgraded. None of these parties has come forward to raise the matter of resumption of mid-sized and large aircraft which is the crucial issue.