Lockdown blues: Chandigarh airport loses ₹10 crore in airline fee

The main revenue of the airport is generated under the aeronautical category, whereby the airport charges ₹800 per passenger from airlines

Over a month of the nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has caused a loss of ₹10 crore to the Chandigarh international airport.

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The main revenue of the airport is generated under the aeronautical category, whereby the airport charges ₹800 per passenger from airlines. For instance: An airline flying to Delhi with 80% occupancy pays around ₹65,000 to airport per flight. Factor in the commercial revenue in the form of rent of retail shops, office space rents, car parking and advertisements, and the total revenue under both the categories comes to around ₹30 lakh per day.

Before the lockdown, there were around 44 flights from the airport connected to major cities across the country and two international flights to Sharjah and Dubai. The daily footfall, both arrival and departure, was 7,000 passengers. All that has been affected ever since the lockdown began on March 24.

LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY

Airport chief executive officer (CEO) Ajay Kumar Bhardwaj said, “Due to the lockdown, we have majorly suffered a loss of ₹10 crore in aeronautical revenue till Friday. As far as rents under commercial revenue are concerned, the stakeholders are not in a position to pay now. We will defer it or give them some concession.”

Bhardwaj said even after opening of the lockdown, it will take around six months to one year to normalise the operations and that they were expecting only 15-20 flights per day initially.

Vivek Nijhawan, in-flight caterer at the airport said, “As a vendor, we have invested huge sums in infrastructure and we were upgrading it further as per the demand of airlines. In the past one month we have suffered a loss of ₹50 lakh. We do not know what will happen in the future.”