After removing Turkey firm Celebi, India appoints Roseate Hotel group, Air India SATS for ground handling

Indian Government on late Thursday wasted no time in appointing the multi-crore hospitality major Bird Group (that manages a portfolio of Roseate hotels in UK and India) along with Air India as the two primary ground handling (GH) operators, hours after annulling the operations of controversial Turkey company Celebi. Further, according to late night discussion, details of which were accessed by The New Indian, the Celebi Cargo terminal and entire cargo operations shall be now taken over by DIAL (the GMR Group). GMR group will retain all existing Celebi Cargo staff on the payrolls of the primary company to handle the cargo services. Till Thursday, Turkish company Celebi was handling both cargo and ground handling (GH) services in Delhi and many other airports in India. The ground handling operations, however, would be taken over by Bird Group and Air India SATS. “As India’s Civil Aviation Ministry has informed that Celebi airport services are unable to meet the requirements for rendering ground handling services at IGI airport with immediate effect, DIAL has terminated the ground handling agreement with Celebi. The other two ground handling agencies (GHAs), operating at IGI airport — AI SATS and Bird Worldwide Flight Services (BWFS) will be contacting all airlines at Delhi airport to provide services in relation to ground handling,” the order by GMR’s Chief Commercial Officer, Puskar Nath Thakur said. This means ground-handling for all domestic and international airlines would now be distributed between Air India SATs and Bird Group. Bird Group, led by its Chairperson, Radha Bhatia and her husband, Vijay Bhatia, has diversified interests and runs a portfolio of Roseate group of hotels across the UK and India. It also operates showrooms for luxury automobile major BMW. This Delhi-based group recently launched a new property Beechfield House in Wiltshire in the UK.

Bird has been already handling ground staff for more than a dozen airlines including Air Seychelles, Egypt Air, Finnair, FIJI Airways, Garuda Indonesia, Hong Kong Airlines, Hunnu Air, Icelandair, MIAT Mongolian, Philippine Airlines, Rwand Air, Skyup, Shandong Airlines, Vietjet Thailand, with the recent addition being Riyadh Air last month, officials told The New Indian.

Source : https://www.newindian.in/after-removing-turkey-firm-celebi-india-appoints-roseate-hotel-group-air-india-sats-for-ground-handling/