Airport Authorities of India operated airports to levy fees

The news for air passengers just seems to be getting worse as after private airports, it is going to be the government operated airports that would be allowing state-run airports also to levy a user fee on outbound passengers to fund development plans. The minister of Aviation, Praful Patel, said last week, at the inauguration of Delhi’s new terminal, which henceforth, the Airport Authority of India or the AAI run airports would be also be charging similar fees for the development of the airports. These include the airports at Kolkata, Chennai, Goa, Ahmedabad and Thiruvananthapuram would also be levying a similar user fee soon. At the moment the new airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore charge a user development fee, which is also called the UDF. But this is charged only from outgoing passengers and a similar situation has also been commenced at the Delhi airport, where the passengers flying out of Delhi will have to pay the fee from Marc. The Mumbai airport developers have also demanded the same and thus they have also suggested this measure for citing revenue crunch in these slowdown times.
 
Considering the fact that even the AAI has been equally hit by the slowdown the aviation ministry and the government has allowed it to follow suit. The aviation minister added that these development fees could be levied even at AAI airports including the ones in like Kolkata, Chennai, Goa, Ahmedabad and Thiruvananthapuram, but till now no date has been fixed for the same. The interesting fact here is that the International Air Transport Association or IATA) has slammed this fee, which implies that now Delhi and Mumbai airports can raise their aeronautical charges by 10%. This fee would be added to the cost of travel for all the passengers who are leaving from these airports. He said that India had a massive aviation infrastructure and hence development was not possible on a scale without the contribution from passengers and other stakeholders.