Civil Aviation Ministry Announces Reforms to Streamline Airport Building Height Clearances

Securing a no objection certificate (NOC) for buildings near airports has been a complex hurdle for developers due to lengthy delays in height clearance by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). However, the Union civil aviation minister, Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, recently announced a series of targeted reforms to streamline and accelerate building height approvals.

Under the existing setup, developers often finalised building designs and submitted housing plans without knowing the precise height clearance permitted for their specific plot. If aviation authorities later flagged the height as an obstacle, projects had to be redesigned from scratch, causing massive financial and time losses. Now, the ministry is moving toward a system that provides applicants with permissible building heights at the very initial stage of planning.

Initially targeted at major metropolitan hubs such as Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, this approach allows housing societies, architects, and builders to design projects within approved vertical limits from day one. Currently, the no objection certificate application system (NOCAS) oversees height restrictions spanning a radius around airports up to 20 km for visual flight rules (VFR) and 56 km for instrument flight rules (IFR).

To eliminate the need for every property owner to apply directly to the central aviation authority, the government is exploring decentralisation by empowering urban local bodies (ULBs) or municipal corporations to issue height NOCs at the local level based on pre-mapped aviation zoning data. Here, routine housing approvals can be integrated directly into regular municipal building plan sanctions. The new directive emphasises minimising initial physical site visits and rationalising document requirements. By leveraging automated digital tools, spatial mapping, and transparent public data, the approval process will rely far less on manual verification, drastically cutting down clearance timelines. The ministry has given a strict 15-day timeline to officials for finalisation and implementation of the reforms.