Citizens don’t buy ministry’s idea

Citizens don’t buy ministry’s idea
Favour 30% Of Domestic Flights Out Of HAL Airport Over 80-Seater Aircraft
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bangalore: Citizen and industry groups in Bangalore feel the civil aviation ministry’s suggestion that only short-haul flights operate out of the HAL airport does not make sense.
“Why should a person living in Yelahanka have to commute to HAL airport to take a short-haul flight. The more sensible criterion would be to say that about 70% of domestic flights operate out of the new airport and the remaining from HAL airport,” says TOI’s Lead India initiative winner R K Misra. “Each domestic airline should be told that they can at most fly 30% of its capacity (in and out of Bangalore) from HAL.”
On Tuesday, after a meeting with Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), civil aviation minister Praful Patel had said that BIAL had been asked to consider allowing the old airport remain open for small planes (80-seaters and below) for regional connectivity. “We asked them to consider this so that people taking 40-45 minute flights out of Bangalore don’t have to spend over an hour just reaching the new facility,” he had said.
Sudip Banerjee, president of enterprise solutions in Wipro, and an active member of the citizens’ body Bangalore City Connect, agrees with Misra. “Let’s not put restrictions like 80-seater aircraft. Hardly anybody flies to Hubli, for instance. What we need is possibly a split of domestic flights, with about 30% operating out of HAL airport. Actually, the market should decide these things. The important point is, if you have two airports in Bangalore, air traffic itself will grow. And BIAL will have no cause for concern even if HAL remains open,” he says.
The general feeling is that the short-haul criterion does not benefit frequent flyers at all, most of whom would still have to commute about two hours or more to the new airport. Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has also said that about one-third of domestic flights should operate out of HAL airport.
Devesh Agarwal of the Bangalore Chamber of Industry & Commerce says the criterion could be something like limiting HAL to 3 million passengers annually and allowing the cap to be reviewed annually. An alternative, he says, is for domestic airlines for any sector to make bids for a time slot in HAL airport. “This bid amount can be given to BIAL as commercial benefit. The airline can choose to recover the bid amount by charging a higher airfare ex-HAL for the passengers’ convenience,” he says.
Yet another option is seen to be to give BIAL the operational responsibility of the terminal at HAL that is at present on lease to the Airports Authority of India, with the understanding that BIAL has to run the terminal without a user development fee (UDF), or cap UDF to a small amount of Rs 200 for the next three years after which the UDF is indexed to inflation.
If HAL were to be kept open only for 80-seater and smaller aircraft (ATR turbo props and Embraers) then it would only be beneficial to those airlines that have these fleet of aircraft like Kingfisher, Deccan and Jet.
Other operators like Spice-Jet, Go Air and Indigo, which operate hop flights out of Bangalore connecting regional cities would not be able to fly into HAL. All these airlines operate aircraft like Boeing 737-800 and Airbus A320 with seating capacity of more than 150 passengers.
BIAL: “We have taken note of the suggestions made by the ministry of civil aviation and have exchanged our views on the
importance of having a single aviation platform.”