<Constraints of adequate airspace is most felt at airfields, jointly managed by the IAF and civil aviation.There are 28 civil enclaves in defence airfields of which 20 are operational. ... With addition of more private airlines due to the opening up of the country's skies for civilian traffic, the IAF needs more space for training....Last September former chief of air staff Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy (Retd) had said the government was working towards de-reserving some of the defence air spaces."We appreciate the IAF's needs since they provide a large feed to civil aviation in terms of pilots and technical staff," Patel said.Incidentally, the Ministry of Defence last year had earned Rs 68.96 crore from the defence airfields by allowing them to be used for civil flights.> -------------- This report needs to be fleshed out step by step. The first thing is to list out the civil enclaves (CEs) involved. Goanet (Sep 2004) had a list of 20 CEs a number which tallies with that given in the current news report. These are in alphabetical order:
Agra, Allahabad, Bagdogra, Bhuj, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Goa, Gorakhpur, Gwalior, Jammu, Jamnagar, Jorhat, Jodhpur, Leh, Pune, Port Blair, Silchar, Srinagar, Tezpur, and Vishakhapatnam. The next question is, which are the 8 non-functional CEs? Kochi may have dropped off the list of CEs after the greenfield airport was forced to be built. Which are the other 7? And why is Hyderabad not featured in the list of CEs? What is the exact status of the present Hyderabad Begumpet airport which is due to be closed when the new one is ready? Next key question: Which of the 20 CEs are non-IAF and (besides Goa) are under Navy's control? This list of Navy controlled CEs might read as follows: Goa, Jamnagar, Port Blair, Vishakhapatnam. Note that Bangalore airport is under HAL and the CE is due to be shut down once BIAL is ready in 2008. Note also that the bulk of the Rs 70 crore annual earnings for Defense may be coming from non-IAF CEs like Bangalore HAL and Goa with Pune (IAF) placing a distant third. According to the current news report the deal seems to be between civil aviation ministry and IAF. The Navy controlled ones may be kept out of its purview. This is not a sensible move as it smacks of piece meal decision making. What is the purpose of the exercise? If it is at all linked to air traffic conditions then Goa should figure prominently due to its closeness to Mumbai (not to mention Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune etc) and the heavy and growing international charter traffic. Chances are that the main focus is to alleviate pressures on Pune's Lohegaon CE due to political (NCP) considerations. There may be some horse trading whereby concessions are granted in Lohegaon by the IAF in return for concessions by AAI in forward airports in Gujarat and the North East. There would be minimal disturbance of the existing defense constraints on airspace in the process. These might have to be tackled separately at some future date keeping the vexed issue hanging for many more years. Lastly, we need to address the issue of the use of military bases for training. Supposedly this is balanced out by the supply of military trained pilots and technicians for civilian aviation. What are the aggregate figures in this regard? Is the supply of a handful of retired military pilots annually sufficient justification for interfering with thriving economic activity year in year out at existing CEs like Goa and Pune? Perhaps it is high time that thought was given to a few inter-service training bases which are far from economically active areas and where military flight training can be consolidated to the maximum extent. The Navy may, however, have to supplement this with carrier based training hopefully at Seabird and/or Kochi instead of Goa.