A total of 11 airports have been operationalized under the Greenfield Airport policy. The government has accorded ‘In-Principle’ approval for the setting up of 21 Greenfield Airports across the country. The work on the remaining 10 airports is in process. Lists of Greenfield airport operationalized:-
At present, 11 greenfield airports are in service. They are Durgapur, Shirdi, Kannur, Pakyong, Kalaburagi, Orvakal (Kurnool), Sindhudurg, Kushinagar, Itanagar, Mopa, and Shivamogga. The remaining ten cities where the airport will be built are – Navi Mumbai, Vijayapura, Hassan in Karnataka, Dabra (Gwalior) in Madhya Pradesh, Noida (Jewar) in Uttar Pradesh, Dholera and Hirasar in Gujarat, Karaikal in Puducherry, Dagadarthi, Bhogapuram in Andhra Pradesh, and Kannur in Kerala.
About Greenfield Airport:-
The greenfield airport are those which are being constructed from a scratch on the undeveloped ground or a new site. The government formulated a Greenfield Airports (GFA) Policy, 2008 to provide detailed guidelines, procedures, and steps related to the construction of Greenfield airports across the country. Under this policy, the project proponent – an airport developer or the state government, who wants to establish a Greenfield airport, is required to send a proposal to the Ministry in the prescribed format for a 2-stage approval process – (a) Site Clearance, and (b) In-Principle approval. After the approval, the responsibility for the construction of airports including its implementation and funding rests with the concerned airport developer.
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Airports on lease
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has planned to lease out 25 airports of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) under the ‘National Monetization Pipeline (NMP)’ over the years 2022 to 2025. A total of eight airports have already been leased out through Public Private Partnership (PPP) for operation, management, and development on a long-term lease basis. These airports are – Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru, and Thiruvananthapuram. Out of these, Delhi and Mumbai airports were leased out in 2006 while, Mangaluru, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad were handed over to the Concessionaires in 2020. The airports in Guwahati, Jaipur, and Thiruvananthapuram were leased out in 2021.