Hyderabad steals march over Blore

Hyderabad steals march over Blore
New Delhi, B S Arun, dhns:
What Bangalore does, Hyderabad seems to do one better.

After Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) announced launching of its new airport on March 30, the GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited said its first flight will take off on March 16. It has stolen a march over its tech-hub competitor.

“The first flight from the GHIAL will take off on March 16 after the inauguration, which will be done a week before that, around March 10,” airport Chairman Kiran Kumar Grandhi told Deccan Herald here on Sunday.

Greenfields

BIAL and its partners , the Karnataka government and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) launched the concept of greenfield airports in the country, and after countless meetings over several years, began work on the airport in July 2005.

The groundwork for the GHAIL airport, however, started much later but it had the advantage of all the policy and procedures laid out thanks to the BIAL. Hyderabad airport’s civil work began in December 2005 after financial closure in August that year.

The BIAL went through some rough times, the last being redesigning of the airport because of which the project cost went up from Rs 1,400 crore to nearly Rs 2,400 crore. Still, BIAL has adhered to its schedule and will be launching operations five days ahead of the earlier schedule of April 2.

The new Hyderabad airport, which will be A380 compatible, will have a capacity of 12 million passengers per year compared to 10.5 m of Bangalore.

User fee

GHIAL sources indicated that they too would be charging user development fee (UDF) on the embarking passengers but declined to get into the specifics saying talks were still on with the project partners.
Civil aviation ministry sources had earlier told that BIAL has suggested user fee of Rs 675 for embarking domestic passengers and Rs 955 for international passenger.

However, the ministry is understood to have suggested that the final arbitrator in the matter would be the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority which is likely to be set up shortly.