There may be no respite for the airplane passengers of Bangalore and the nearby areas even after the Devanahalli airport is ready. The efforts at improving the international connectivity may come a cropper if Vijay Mallya, chairman and managing director, Kingfisher Airlines is to be believed.
"The greenfield airport coming up at Devanahalli will not be able to meet the air traffic needs foreseen in the near future, forget 10 years or 15 years from now," said Mallya. The airport falls far short of its ability to handle the projected increase in air traffic, both passenger and cargo. He was critical of the present state government's style of functioning.
"The administration is crippled by the differences and the bickerings in the government and the arm twisting by the de facto chief minister," he said without naming Deve Gowda, Janata Dal (S) supremo.
The red tape and the political differences and bickerings that have crippled the government has hit the functioning of the Karnataka government and had slowed down many projects or even got some others cancelled, he added.
Meanwhile Kingfisher Airlines has awarded a multi-year contract for pilot training on Airbus A320 aircraft to Emirates CAE flight training.
CAE is an integrated training solutions and simulator technology provider for civil aviation and defence based in Canada. The training programme for this includes both instruction and simulator times for initial and recurrent training for pilots at the Emirates-CAE Flight Training facility in Dubai.
"This contract marks a major achievement for CAE," said Robert E Brown, president and CEO, CAE.
"Through contracts like these, CAE is proving itself the training provider of choice for the rapidly expanding Indian start-up airline market," added Brown. ECFT is jointly operated by Emirates and CAE under a long term teaming agreement.
