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NEW DELHI, June 30

THE domestic airlines industry can breathe easy for now. The Government plans to maintain `status quo' on the issue of allowing domestic airlines to carry on doing their own ground handling work even after July 1.

The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) had earlier this year cleared a proposal that from July 1 this year all ground handling work at Indian airports would be carried out only by the subsidiaries of Air India, Indian Airlines and Airports Authority of India (AAI).

"The status quo as exists today will also be maintained from July 1 onwards. There is no official notification of the CCS decision so on what basis can the decision be implemented," senior officials of the Ministry of Civil Aviation said.

Officials added that even if the notification was to be implemented it was a long drawn out and time consuming process that could not be implemented before the deadline set by the CCS expires.

Sources maintain that this is not the first time that a decision of the Cabinet has not been implemented. In the aviation industry itself there is the case of the Cabinet approving a proposal of providing Rs 325 crore to Indian Airlines that has not been implemented till date.

Meanwhile, the recent proposal to implement the latest CCS decision had the private sector airlines industry up in arms as it believed that the decision would rob it of a major unique selling point.

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