DIAL wants to charge passengers fee till 2015

Passengers may be forced to directly finance at least one-fourth of the Rs.12,718 crore modernization programme of New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, if the regulatory body of airports approves a new funding proposal.
IGI’s privatization and modernization was put at Rs.5,900 crore in 2006, but the projected expenditure has more than doubled since then.
Of this, passengers are already going to pay Rs.1,827 crore by 2012 as an airport development fee, which is a Rs.200 levy on domestic tickets and Rs.1,300 on international ones.
The operator, Delhi International Airport Pvt. Ltd (DIAL), has asked the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) that it be allowed to charge the airport development fee until 2015, or another two years and eight months. This will allow it to collect an additional Rs.1,654 crore from passengers, or a total of Rs.3,481 crore, said a DIAL executive and a government official. Both did not want to be named.
AERA, which recently cleared a similar increase at the Hyderabad airport, has nearly completed its IGI airport project cost audit.
09/11/10 Tarun Shukla/Live Mint

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Categories: Airports Nov 2010