More airports toe Hyderabad’s user fee line

New Delhi: Using airports in the country is only going to become costlier from here, if the user fee hike at the Hyderabad airport is any signal to go by. The rationale is simple : if we want good infrastructure at our disposal, we have to pay for it.
According to global consultancy firm Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), whenever infrastructure is improved, charges are bound to rise. “The India story has just begun for airports. If we want world class facilities, we should be ready to pay for it. There is no running away from this reality. The airport regulator is here to balance user interest and airports' viability, but the question to be asked is how much will the charges go up by,” CAPA South Asia CEO Kapil Kaul said.
Airports Economic Regulatory Authority's (AERA's ) logic behind the sharp fee hike at the GMR-operated Hyderabad international airport is, that users—passengers as well as airlines—have praised the infrastructure at Hyderabad. "If we want to use the facility, paying for it is fair. Had some PSUs done the modernisation, even they would have wanted a fair return on their investment.”
Last week, the airport regulator had issued an order hiking the user development fee, a revenue receipt for the Hyderabad airport, to . 430 (from . 350) for domestic passengers and . 1,700 (from . 1,000) for international passengers making it the most expensive Indian airport.
05/11/10 Anindya Upadhyay/Economic Times

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Categories: Airports Nov 2010