BIAL to jack up airline parking fee

BIAL to jack up airline parking fee
Bangalore,DH News Service:

The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA), not withstanding recession in the civil aviation industry, has recently allowed all private greenfield airports in the country, including Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL) to jack up their landing and parking charges for domestic and international carriers.

The new charges came into effect from July 1, following a notification issued last month.

However, this move may not go down well with domestic carriers, who are yet to recover from the global financial meltdown and are flying aircraft with fewer passengers. The MoCA has hiked the airline fee by ten per cent, while allowing greenfield airports such as the BIAL, GMR-promoted Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Hyderabad and the Mumbai International Airport to up their charges. With this hike, the ministry has made landing and parking charges uniform across all greenfield airports.

According to Anjana Kher Murray, head, Corporate Communications of BIAL, the ten per cent hike in landing and parking rates has been allowed to be implemented from July 1. Following the hike, the rates now have come on par with what other Airports Authority of India (AAI) airports charge. “They had raised the rates in April 2009. But, BIAL did not hike the rates of landing and parking fee in May 2008, when it opened the greenfield airport for commercial operations at Devanahalli,” Murray said.

International carriers that flew large aircraft enjoyed lower rates than before, at Bangalore last year, says BIAL, which currently handles around 270 aircraft movements per day. The rates were lower, from the defence-run HAL airport’s levies (which were generally higher than the AAI rates) to AAI’s old rates applicable in 2001. This was so even when BIAL could have included a 38 to 42 per cent inflation over 2001 rates in the first year, as per the concession agreement between BIAL and MoCA signed in 2004 added BIAL officials.

Charges per tonne

According to the MoCA notification, parking fee for aircraft weighing less than 100 tonnes will be Rs 4.10 an hour per tonne and for aircraft weighing above 100 tonnes, the new charges will be Rs 410 and an additional Rs 5.40 a tonne per hour in excess of 100 tonnes and for all aircraft weighing up to 100 tonnes, landing fee for international flights will be Rs 250.50 per tonne and for flights other than international flights, it will be Rs 187.90 per tonne.

For aircraft weighing over 100 tonnes, the landing fee for international flights will be Rs 25,050 plus Rs 336.60 per tonne in excess of 100 tonnes and for others, it will be Rs 18,790 plus Rs 252.50 per tonne in excess of 100 tonnes.

AERA to be operational

Meanwhile, the newly formed Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) that will be entrusted with the regulation of airport charges in high tariff airports, will be operational in three to four weeks. This announcement was made by M Madhavan Nambiar, secretary to MoCA recently. Currently, airport tariffs in place had been decided by the AAI. But the government-run authority has been suffering revenue loss due to a dip in airline passenger traffic and a lowering of airport landing charges.