With 70% market share, AISATS pushes for fair competition in ground handling

AISATS CEO R Ramana spoke about the evolving regulatory landscape, infrastructure push, and the company’s growth plans

India’s ground-handling industry is expanding rapidly alongside soaring aviation demand, but policy clarity on competition remains pending. AISATS, which is a joint venture between Air India and SATS, manages nearly 70% of flights at key hubs, is calling for regulations that reflect actual flight volumes rather than just passenger counts. At the same time, the company is making a major bet on the upcoming Noida International Airport, where it is developing a large cargo hub and logistics zone to serve the growing e-commerce, pharma, and perishables sectors.

AISATS, which is a joint venture between Air India and SATS, manages nearly 70% of flights at key hubs, is calling for regulations that reflect actual flight volumes rather than just passenger counts. (HT)

AISATS CEO R Ramana spoke about the evolving regulatory landscape, infrastructure push, and the company’s growth plans. Key excerpts:

How has the growth been for the ground-handling industry in FY 25 compared to the previous year?

India’s ground-handling services market was valued at $1.83 billion in 2024, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.1% to reach $2.78 billion by 2031. Major hubs such as Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru are witnessing significant infrastructure upgrades to handle higher passenger and cargo volumes, further fuelling demand for quality ground-handling services... Overall, the industry is on a strong upward trajectory, with growth coming not just from volumes but also from rising benchmarks in service quality, technology integration, and sustainability.

How are you going to leverage this growth?

Across its network, AISATS has experienced healthy, broad-based growth over the past few months. Improved passenger loads and aircraft rotations have lifted turns and tightened OTP targets, where our digital resource-allocation and baggage-tracking tools have helped... We’re focused on quality and safety.

You said the government’s regional connectivity scheme UDAN is opening up new Tier-II and Tier-III markets. Despite that, UDAN airports see limited interest from big players versus metro airports. What are the factors you see for this kind of response?

UDAN has unquestionably expanded India’s map of connectivity, but tier-3 and 4 stations operate on very different economics. Load factors are volatile, belly cargo is limited, schedules can be seasonal, and the turnaround envelope is tight relative to the fixed cost of deploying certified manpower and equipment to smaller airfields.

[But] the direction of travel is positive and as more UDAN routes get operationalised, more airports come up on the grid, and as volumes deepen, you’ll see greater private participation, provided policy continuity and predictable schedules continue.

We have seen the recent exit of a major player Celebi. At the time of its exit, the Turkish firm had over 10,000 people on its payroll. How much of that has been absorbed by you?

Currently, we already handle more than 70% of the flights in most of the key airports we are present in. Per month, we are handling about 16,000 flights and the number of flights that we had to handle went above that because of Celebi’s exit, which was handling 500-600 each month. In percentage points, this addition is hardly about 3%.

But, what is more important is how the industry stakeholders came together when this exit happened. The transition was seamless. Be it competitors, airport operators or the government agencies that all came together overnight. Currently, we employ 17,000 staff pan India and about 1,000-1,200 of these was absorbed from Celebi.

The government came out with a draft ground handling policy in 2015. However, this has remained at the proposal level. How does the absence of a proper framework impact the industry?

The policy is undergoing a change, but prior to that, we already had this need for the three ground handlers at airports with more than 10-million passengers per annum capacity. It is good to have competition because you cannot have a monopoly as well.

It’s good to have players, but more than looking at it from the perspective of passengers, it might be better, with the new changes, if they look take into consideration the number of flights coming into the airport because that directly determines the workload. That might be a good change... They need not rush into it, but they just need to ensure that there’s fair play and fair competition.

What happens is that people get blindsided when airports become privatised then the private operators start to determine, at their level, what happens in that airport. By and large, I hope whatever policy that comes out ensures fair play and fair competition, and does not restrict players. We have seen cases where people have some clauses which restrict foreign airlines, foreign ownership in ground handling companies or airline shareholding in ground handling companies. Those restrictive clauses, if they are not there would be good. I hope whatever policy changes comes about ensures fair play and competition and also looks at it from the perspective of number of flights rather than number of passengers

How do you see the business panning out in the near future? Do you plan to bid for more airports going forward?

We are committed to long-term investment in world-class infrastructure and talent. We will certainly bid for more airports as opportunities arise, since we want to be an active contributor to the growth story. Internationally too, we are exploring opportunities in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond, complementing the SATS global network where we already have a presence.

Recently, DGCA gave its safety clearance to AISATS, making it the first ground handling services provider in the country to have such a certification. Can you elaborate on how this would help the firm in its operations?

With this certification, passengers can feel more safe and at ease that the ground operations are being carried out in the right manner and in an efficient manner. So, DGCA is regulating from the perspective of safety primarily.

To issue this safety clearance... [DGCA has] gone through our safety management practices, risk management protocols, our documentations, standard operating procedures that we have in various aspects. The entire ground safety level, operational standards and efficiency will go up because of this introduction by DGCA to regulate the ground operations. So, the entire ground safety level and operational standards and efficiency will go up because of this introduction by DGCA to regulate the ground operations.

With airports growing rapidly in India, do you see challenges for the ground-handling industry in keeping pace with this growth?

While there are only a few big ground-handling players today, we expect more to emerge, which we welcome since healthy competition raises standards and keeps market dynamics at par with global levels. At smaller airports, hand holding may be needed for local players, but with better road connectivity, privatisation, and rising passenger and cargo volumes, they too can thrive.