Airports Authority of India (AAI), the mainstay of Civil Aviation in the Country celebrated its 23rd Annual Day on 1st April, 2018 at Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi with a cultural extravaganza – ‘Horizon.’ Shri. Jayant Sinha, Hon’ble Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation was the Chief Guest of the event.
The colourful evening of music and celebration started with the felicitation of AAI airports that made a mark in ACI-ASQ and CSI Awards respectively. While the Airport Directors of Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Indore and Pune were felicitated for their respective airports making it under various categories of the coveted list of ACI-ASQ Awards 2017, APDs of AAI’s Raipur, Udaipur and Dehradun were felicitated for their respective airports achieving 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranks in the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) Survey.
Apart from various airports, Shri Subhash Kumar, General Manager (Fire), the recipient of President’s Medal for Fire Safety was also felicitated.While addressing the audience, Shri. Jayant Sinha congratulated AAI family and acknowledged the significant role it plays in the growth of the civil aviation sector in India. He applauded significant strides that AAI made in the last year in terms of financial performance and also commended its CSR initiatives in serving the society.
“Aviation is about four ‘S’, he said. Setting benchmarks for the organization, he asserted, that while AAI meets the expectations in terms of Safety and Security – the bedrock of aviation; on the other hand, Service delivery has to aim for world-class standards. “We can deliver against these 3S only if we have the right Skills,” he said while emphasizing the need of a skilled manpower for aviation sector.
Dr. Guruprasad Mohapatra, Chairman, AAI thanked all his colleagues for a successful year and warmly acknowledged all their efforts. “All our efforts have given enormous confidence to us and we are now aiming to achieve the Navratna status for which we have already applied,” he said.
The cultural evening was interspersed with dance performances by Zenith Dance Group, stand-up comic act by famous comedian Rajeev Nigam and musical performance by well-known Bollywood playback singer Benny Dayal.