Newstrack

New heliports to open in Mumbai and Hyderabad

Anupama Sushil - New Delhi

AVIACON, the heliport planning, designing and execution company will be taking on a newer, bigger role in the coming year. The company is slated to build more heliports in the country, mainly for private use. Speaking exclusively to Express AviationWorld, Madhu Mehbubani, chief executive, AVIACON said that they are strongly looking at developing elevated heliports in the country. The company is already into developing heliports for Parsavnath Developers in Chandigarh and for Reliance in New Mumbai. "There are another three elevated heliports in Mumbai and one in Hyderabad that are currently in the process of development as well," mentioned Mehbubani. He also stated that with the rising aviation trends, it will be very difficult for the Airports Authority of India to develop and manage all the airports in the country. Hence, there will be many private operators that might come into the picture very soon.

He also added that this would help in the case of special economic zones, for example, which would definitely benefit from a service like this.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has been approached to work towards a better response time towards such initiatives, like having separate corridors for the helicopters, and so far things seems to be improving.

However, Mehbubani explained, “Right now the situation is quite complex as there is a shortage of trained staff, land affordability is a problem, there is trouble getting a parking slot, infrastructure is not up to the mark, etc. Thus, more efforts now have to be taken towards improvement.”