BIAL: The New Airport Is A Reflection Of The Local Culture

The new airport is a reflection of the local culture
Creating jobs for the locals and giving a boost to the economy


City locals a part of airport operations

The new airport has made substantial efforts to make sure that it is reflective of the local culture and heritage. From a recruitment point of view, qualifications and expertise being equal, preference has been shown to Kannadigas in the organization. This has resulted in the employment of 53% Kannadigas out of the total employee strength of 473 (as on March 31st 2008). Even more encouraging is the fact that out of the 185 managers, Kannadigas account to 74 (40% of the total managers).

BIAL has also been giving new applicants from Karnataka, and particularly candidates from the neighbourhood of Bengaluru International Airport, the attention they deserve. Since the end of February 2008, BIAL has received around 2000 resumes from Karnataka local and 574 of these resumes have been submitted by candidates claiming to have lost land when the land for the new airport was originally acquired by KIADB. Out of these 574 applicants, 210 have already been recruited at the airport. All the other resumes were further classified into qualification groups and interviewed for positions of relevance

Added attention was paid by BIAL by making sure that the various concessionaires also hired local Kannadiga talent, out of this talent pool provided by BIAL. A copy of all applications received was handed over to the concessionaires for further screening. 80% of the recruits are Kannadigas. Total recruitments made by the Concessionaires are around 2750 employees.

In addition, all signage inside the airport is also in Kannada, English and Hindi. The design of the logo identity as well as the airport name also reflects the essence of the garden city.

Albert Brunner, CEO of BIAL said, “In future the increase in capacity will lead to more recruitments by the concessionaires as well as BIAL.  BIAL will make sure that the preference is given to the Kannadigas as far as possible. Furthermore, ours is possibly one of the few organizations that encourage the non-Kannadiga employees of BIAL to learn the local language by offering language classes.”