November 27, 2007	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 16, 1428

LAHORE, Nov 26: The Civil Aviation Authority has decided to privatize airports which have been running in loss since long. In the first phase, the CAA plans to hand over the control of the Faisalabad Airport to a private party next year. The CAA role will of a regulator.

This will be another major move after the restructuring of the CAA in Nov last year.

“Once this experiment works, the CAA may go for the privatization of other airports where it has been facing loss,” CAA Chief Executive Officer (airport services) Junaid Amin told Dawn.

He said before privatizing certain airports, the CAA would hire the services of an aviation company to work out how would the authority take maximum financial benefit from the process.

According to another officer, the CAA has been facing loss in the operation of some 19 airports. There are total 43 airports in the country and of them 23 are operational. The authority is making bucks from four major airports - Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar.

Some local and foreign firms have reportedly shown interest in making use of smaller airports for recreational sports\flying activities.

CAA Director General Farooq Rahmatuallah described it a positive move and said that it would generate revenue for the authority.

Answering a question, he said the authority was encouraging private airlines to operate from domestic routes. To ensure the viability of a private airline it had been made mandatory on it to deposit at least Rs500 million as surety money, he added.

He said the private airlines of the country had launched their foreign operations, which was a very good sign. He said Air China was in talks with the government for the commencement of Beijing-Islamabad and Shanghai-Karachi/Lahore operations. British Midlands International was also in advanced stages of dialogue for flights to Lahore, he added.

The DG said Singapore Airlines wished to increase the number of flights from three to six and British Airways from this winter season would have six flights per week. He said Virgin Atlantic was also working on possible operations in Pakistan and GMG (second carrier of Bangladesh) had requested for an initial dialogue for finding out the requirements, he added.