Pay cess to make airlines reach smaller towns

A plan panel committee wants the cess on airtickets of those flying to major cities such as Delhi and Mumbai. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Dec 17, 2011, 20:23:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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If rise in international fuel prices leading to increase in cost of flying was not enough, a Planning Commission committee wants domestic flyers to pay cess to ensure that flights to smaller cities and far-flung areas are financially viable.

A plan panel committee on civil aviation has recommended creation of an "exclusive fund" to provide explicit and direct subsidy to airlines to fly to economically unviable routes and developing airports and heliports at tier-II and tier-III cities.

"The government should provide a token amount of Rs 100 crore for starting the Essential Air Service Fund (EASF)," a panel's working group chaired civil aviation secretary SNA Zaidi, has recommended.

The report also said that world over it was not uncommon to provide direct intervention mechanism by the government to provide air connectivity to underserved and unserved destinations.

"In order to further encourage provision of air transport service on such un-economical but essential routes it would be desirable to consider providing explicit subsidy support from the fund," the report said, while mentioning United States and Australia as two countries where such subsidy mechanism is available.

India's civil aviation industry is among the 10 largest aviation markets in the world and has capacity to be ranked among top five. India's passenger handling capacity has increased from 72 million in 2006 to 233 million in 2011 and cargo handling facility has witnessed seven-fold increase during the same time period.

Although the biggest growth has been in low cost airline in domestic sector, the panel felt the annual passenger load would double by 2017 if air access to smaller towns and cities is provided. This will require Rs 67,000 crore investment to develop new airports of which Rs 50,000 is expected from the private sector.

Despite the growth, the committee said, the industry has failed to reach common person (aam aadmi) and has suggestion promoting setting up of regional airlines and having a heliport in each district with the help of the new fund. "Such support should be allocated through a transparent process of minimum subsidy bidding," the report said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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