The Maharana Pratap Airport of Udaipur has been ranked no. 1 as the cleanest and safest airport in the country in the category of airports having passenger handling capacity of up to 1.5 million. A total of 52 airports in India fall under category III.
The inspection was done by a survey team of the Airport Authority of India (AAI). The team inspected the airports on 32 parameters which majorly covered all the operational aspects of the airports falling in the said category. The parameters included air traffic control, runway and terminal building.
Udaipur Airport has been adjudged the best cleanest airport in the category followed by Vadodara’s Civil Airport Harni which comes second and Vijaywada Airport which ranked the third cleanest airport in the country.
Recently, the airport of Udaipur was also declared “single-use plastic-free airport terminals” in January 2019.
The airport authority took various steps to eliminate single-use plastic items at passenger terminals, making Udaipur Airport a plastic-free zone.
Plastic items straws, plastic cutlery and plastic plates are banned on the airport. The airport has also switched over to other packaging alternatives and replacements.
AAI has also enhanced its waste management systems and is promoting the use of eco-friendly, sustainable alternatives progressively like the use of bio-degradable garbage bags in bins and installation of the plastic bottle-crushing machine at Udaipur Airport.