The recently concluded Ambani pre-wedding festivities were the talk of the town, attended by the who’s who of entertainment, technology, business, philanthropy and politics, both Indian and global, descending Jamnagar, where the events were held.
Stars such as Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, and business magnates like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Gautam Adani, N Chandrasekaran, and Kumar Mangalam Birla graced the pre-wedding festivities of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant.
A recent report by The Hindu reveals how the Indian Airforce was reduced to air traffic control handling over 600 flight movements over the five-day event.
On a normal day, the Jamnagar airport is equipped to handle six charter flights.
According to its sources, Reliance Group wrote to Defence Secretary Giridhar Aramane requesting permission from the Chief of Air Defence Staff Vivek Ram Chaudhari to make the Indian Airforce available between February 23 and March 14, to manage the high-profile flights that were bound to fly in and out of Jamnagar.
The report states that initially a request of 30-40 flights was made.
“Given the limited facilities here (Jamnagar), infrastructure was created at the last minute following detailed planning and deployment of additional manpower. The numbers were unprecedented, Jamnagar had never seen traffic like this before,” a source was quoted by The Hindu. “Given the number of aircraft coming in and the very high profile guests, it needed constant improvisation to ensure smooth flow and prevent any incident,” the source said, referring to the Ambani pre-wedding bash.
During Anant Ambani’s pre-wedding festivities, the Mumbai airport, one of the busiest in the country, was shut down for four hours for all non-scheduling flights. This complicated matters for the IAF on ‘air-traffic control duty’, opening its technical area to prevent flight safety situations, the report stated.
“In large airports, the ATCs have a separate communication channel for ground movement and a separate channel for approach. The Jamnagar ATC had only one channel. So the ATC was handling about 60-80 aircraft at a time,” the source was quoted by The Hindu.
Jamnagar transformed into international airport for Ambani pre-wedding bash
On March 2, the Business Standard reported how Jamnagar airport, with no parking facility, was transformed into an international calibre for Anant and Radhika’s pre-wedding festivities.
“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. The Airport Authorities of India (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,” the report stated.
Further, the report also stated how the Reliance Group had used security personnel from the Gujarat government, instead of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). The report stated that instead of the usual 35-odd security staff at this airport, the number has been beefed up by the state government to around 60 for the Ambani pre-wedding bash.
