PRIVATE PROFIT

Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana

LOSE-LOSE

SITUATION




To add insult to injury, a User Development Fee (UDF) of around Rs 750 per passenger would be charged for using these “world class” facilities at the new airport. Provision for UDF is made in contracts with the private operators, although its amount is nowhere mentioned and is supposed to be related to costs, leaving the door open to arbitrariness and lack of transparency. While passengers thus lose heavily, so too do other users of the airport. For instance, a “throughput charge” of Rs 2150 per kilolitre would be charged from fuel companies for use of facilities provided by the airport. These charges would naturally be passed on to the airlines, who would further pass them on to passengers! While the airport operators are set to gain, this is a lose-lose situation for airlines and passengers both, and the growing Indian civil aviation sector can only suffer as a result.


Low-cost carriers and their users will be the hardest hit, dealing a heavy blow to the on-going broadbasing of the civil aviation industry. User fees would even exceed the price of air tickets especially on short-haul sectors, such as Hyderabad-Bengaluru, and certainly dampen demand. The civil aviation ministry has recently announced a grand plan to promote regional connectivity especially to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, through a new category of carriers, the Scheduled Air Transport (Regional) Services. These too will be severely hit by user fees. In the face of widespread protests by consumers and airlines, the new Hyderabad airport has already announced deferring of user fees from domestic passengers at least for the coming four months pending an audit of airport construction and running costs. But BIAL has refused to follow suit.