Dabolim expansion pruned by Rs 70 cr

New Delhi: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has launched a ‘value engineering’ project to cut costs at upcoming airports, so as to make them 30 per cent more cost effective than their private sector competitors.
The first guinea pig of this pruning exercise was none other than Goa. The project cost for the new integrated terminal at Goa, which was recently launched with much fanfare by Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, was reduced from the earlier proposed Rs 400 crore to Rs 330 crore, by reducing its size.
Though the AAI has sought to justify this by pointing out the ‘reduced number of flyers’, the fact is that the pruning exercise was embarked on long before the present slump in air travel.
But even as it is lowering the costs of its upcoming terminals, the AAI has also rejected the idea of developing low cost airports in India. A team of senior AAI officials recently went to Singapore and Malaysia to visit low-cost terminals there and has reported that this concept will not work in India except for Delhi, which will have multiple terminals by next year.
The AAI says that in low cost airports, passengers are denied certain facilities like air conditioning, escalators, travellators and aerobridges, increasing processing time.
Since the AAI charges only Rs 70 as the facilitation charge for services at airports; even if this charge is reduced by half, it won’t make too much difference in a ticket costing a few thousand rupees, a senior official pointed out.
14/03/09 Herald

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Airports Mar 2009