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DIAL allowed fee, air travel costlier
Your air ticket will get more expensive from March 1, thanks to the private airport builder getting permission to levy a charge that will be passed on to passengers.
Your air ticket will get more expensive from March 1, thanks to the private airport builder getting permission to levy a charge that will be passed on to passengers.
Overseas flyers will pay Rs 1,300 more per ticket while domestic passengers will have to dish out Rs 200 more per ticket as development fee.
To help Delhi International Airport Limited, the GMR group-led consortium, cover its running cost to modernise Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, the government on Monday allowed it to levy a development fee.
DIAL aims to make up a shorfall of Rs. 1,827 crore with the fee, which is allowed under the concession agreement with the developer. The money will be used to build hotels and a hospitality park, for which the consortium found no bidders, forcing it to build the facilities itself.
The development fee (DF), whichis being levied “purely on an ad hoc basis”, would be applicable for 36 months only, a government spokeswoman said, adding it would be inclusive of taxes. The consortium, however, had asked for a 39-month plan.
Industry sources said a four per cent shortfall is expected in passenger traffic at the Delhi airport in the current financial year, from the estimated 26 million.
DIAL would be the first airport operator in the country to be allowed to levy such a fee to be collected on a temporary basis. The Government has so far approved User Development Fee for new airports in Hyderabad and Bangalore, which is of a permanent nature.
The levy, to be reviewed after six months, comes in the wake of DIAL informing the Civil Aviation Ministry that it expected a “substantial shortfall” in implementing the Rs 8,975 crore Master Plan.
