Rising airport taxes leave low cost travellers cold

Flying between the brand new airports of Hyderabad and Bangalore will not be a low cost affair, reports CNBC-TV18’s Roshni Menon.
Get ready to shell out more for your low cost air ticket if you are flying from Bangalore or Hyderabad. The user development fee, that the two new airports will charge, may increase your ticket costs by close to 50 %. Add to that, the travel expenditure to the new airports, which are on the cities' outskirts, and you are looking at doubling your travel costs. Some airlines are already considering optimizing and cutting flights to these new airports.
"On a Bangalore-Delhi, we are charging only Rs 3,000-4,000. If you are going to charge one-third as airport charges, then fares are going to go up by 30% and in some cases 50%. This is absolutely unacceptable and a preposterous idea,” said GR Gopinath, Executive Chairman, Simplifly Deccan.
For someone traveling between these two cities, the average flight cost is around Rs 1,800 one-way on a low cost carrier. The user development fee will increase costs by over Rs 1,200. Add to that, the cost of traveling to the airport, and you could end up spending an additional 85% on your trip. That is a reason why even airlines are battling to keep the old airports open.
27/02/08 CNBC-TV18/Moneycontrol.com

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Categories: airports Feb 2008, Low Cost General Feb 2008