400 jets in 4 days: Anant-Radhika's pre-wedding bash in Jamnagar takes off

Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India, arrives in Jamnagar on Friday Photo: PTI

Jamnagar, the fifth largest city of Gujarat south of the Gulf of Kutch, has been on the world map for long as home to the largest oil refinery and petrochemical complex. A pre-wedding bash has now turned Reliance Industries’ quiet township into more than a buzzing locale with jets ferrying movers and shakers from all over the world.

The airport, which is a civil enclave in an Indian Air Force base with no parking space, is managing an estimated 400 charter flights between Friday and Monday as celebrations have begun on a grand scale ahead of the July wedding of the youngest son of RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Anant, with fiancée Radhika Merchant.

The airport director Dhananjay Kumar Singh told Business Standard on Friday that ground handling and security staff had to be strengthened to meet the big air traffic demand. The to-do list was long for the authorities: From setting up a temporary Customs, immigration and quarantine counter to completing the renovation and beautification work—all within the last 45 days or so.

The 400-odd charter flights are transporting the who’s who in the business world to global politics and entertainment. The guest list in Jamnagar could give competition to the annual Davos meet. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Fink, Gautam Adani, N Chandrasekaran, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Ajay Piramal, Rihanna, Shah Rukh Khan, Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone and Sachin Tendulkar are some of the prominent names to have landed in this coastal city, some 300 km away from Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s capital.

As there’s no parking space at the Jamnagar airport, the charter planes are being parked at nearby airports such as Rajkot, Porbandar, Ahmedabad, and Mumbai, according to Singh. On Friday, Jamnagar airport was scheduled to handle 140 charter flight movements (70 departures plus 70 arrivals) with about 50 per cent of the planes coming from abroad.

During this weekend — on Saturday and Sunday — the airport is expected to handle 90 and 70 charter flight movements, respectively. “On March 4, the airport is expected to handle over 100 flight movements as most of the VVIPs would be leaving that day,” he said.

It is learnt that SpiceJet has operated two cargo flights from Dubai to Jamnagar, bringing special food for the VVIPs. The Jamnagar airport has established a temporary CIQ (Customs, immigration and quarantine) facility to process the extraordinary passenger numbers. The CIQ, which was established on February 25, will remain in place till March 6. The ground handling agencies — including AI Airport Services Limited (AIASL) — have got 100 additional persons from other airports such as Ahmedabad and Mumbai to handle the traffic, Singh pointed out.

Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra Group, with wife Anuradha Mahindra in Jamnagar on Friday Photo: Reuters

The AAI, which has just 10-15 employees working in the air traffic control (ATC) services, has got additional employees to help handle the traffic. The operational area is with the IAF.

Instead of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the security at the Jamnagar airport is handled by the security staff (policemen) provided by the Gujarat government. Instead of the usual 35-odd security staff at this airport, the number has been beefed up by the state government to around 60, Singh said.

Then there’s the job to beautify the building. The focus has been on showing Gujarat’s heritage using the Bandhani pattern. As for the city side, beautification mainly meant planting of trees.

On a normal day, the Jamnagar airport handles just six scheduled flight movements per day. Two are operated by Air India (to and from Mumbai) and the remaining four by Star Air (from and to Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

There’s still time before normalcy returns in this city of Gujarat.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO JAMNAGAR

Temporary Customs, immigation and quarantine facility built at Jamnagar airport till March 6.

Additional 100 ground-handling staff deployed.

Gujarat government has provided 55-60 additional security personnel for airport.

Private planes being parked at nearby airports as Jamnagar airport doesn’t have parking space