Delhi airport mulls 'minimal' fee hike

In an attempt to please the airlines that are complaining about a proposed increase in charges at the national capital’s airport, Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) is mulling a “minimal” increase in landing and parking charges. The plan is to charge it directly from passengers, thus making flying out of Delhi airport expensive.

“We are looking at a model where the increase in landing and parking charges would be minimal and the money would be collected from the passengers directly through UDF (user development fee),” according to Sidharth Kapur, chief financial officer, GMR (airports). GMR is the lead member of a consortium that manages the international airport.

 

Kapur said that landing and parking charges constitutes around 1.5 per cent of the total operating cost of these airlines. “Our plan is to increase the landing and parking charges in a way that these charges constitute only up to two per cent of the total cost of operations of the airlines,” he added.

Currently, every passenger departing from the Delhi airport has to pay an airport development fee (ADF) and passenger services fee (PSF). ADF is charged to bridge a gap between the actual and projected cost of construction of upgrading the airport. Every domestic passenger pays Rs 200 and international passenger pays Rs 1,300. PSF of Rs 207 constitutes two components — Rs 130 for security expenditure that goes to the security agencies through the Airports Authority of India and Rs 77 to airport for facilities. The proposed UDF will replace the Rs 77 component.

The proposal is, on an average, for charging a UDF of up to Rs 1,400 from international passengers and Rs 600 from domestic passengers. Domestic and international transit passengers will also have to pay UDF of Rs 360 and Rs 800, respectively, according to the proposal.

The airlines also complain that any extra burden on passengers may impact the growth in passenger numbers, which grew by just 8 per cent in December.

DIAL, however, feels that this will not impact the passenger growth. “We had got done an independent analysis,” said Kapur. “It shows that any increase may impact it, but the growth will bounce back.”

In a recent consultation on the proposed increase in charges at Delhi airport, leading international airlines had termed the increase as “huge”, and said that they would have to rethink their expansion plans for India.

DIAL had applied to Airport Economic Regulatory Authority for an increase in passenger charges by 774 per cent. The airport regulator approved only an increase of 340 per cent.