Air traffic down seventh month in a row; airport developers hit

Mumbai: In sync with a slowing economy, the decline in air passenger traffic in India continued for the seventh consecutive month in January, hitting the private airports hard.
The flow of traffic fell 11% year-on-year (y-o-y) in January. While domestic passenger numbers declined 15.3% y-o-y, international passenger traffic, which lately saw some growth, was virtually flat for the first time in January, adding to the airport developers’ woes.
Among the metro airports, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata in January reported y-o-y declines of 2.7%, 2.3% and 2.6%, respectively, in international passenger numbers, according to Airports Authority of India (AAI) data. This is the latest data available on its website.
For the Delhi airport, it was the first-ever decline in international passenger traffic in the past five years. The last time a decline in international passenger numbers was seen in January 2004 at this airport, then run by the government.
As part of the airport modernization programme, a GMR Group-led consortium is running Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport through Delhi International Airport (P) Ltd (DIAL) and a GVK group-led consortium is operating Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport through Mumbai International Airport Pvt. Ltd (Mial). The GMR Group has also built a greenfield airport in Hyderabad and a consortium led by German conglomerate Siemens AG has built a greenfield airport in Bangalore.
The government has decided to modernize Chennai and Kolkata airports with the help of AAI.
Along with the passengers, there has been fall in cargo traffic, too.
“The fall in passengers and cargo at airports will have a direct impact on the revenues of airport developers. The collection of airport development fee and user development fee at airports will go down,” said Raajeev B. Batra, executive director (advisory services) at audit and consulting firm KPMG India.
Airports, including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore, charge a development fee from passengers that ranges between Rs100 and Rs375 per ticket for domestic travel.
Domestic carriers, which are expecting to post a combined loss of at least Rs10,000 crore for the fiscal that ended 31 March, have pulled out at least 15% capacity from the domestic market.
Many international carriers, except those from West Asia, have done the same.
According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the airlines flew 7% fewer passengers during February, compared with the same month last year.
07/04/09 P.R. Sanjai/Livemint

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

Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Apr 2009