More articles by

Soumik Dey
Soumik Dey

Aviation

IATA opposes India's move to increase airport charges

9moon (File) Representational image

Global airlines body International Air Transport Association (IATA) has opposed the recent move by the Airports Authority of India to hike airport charges for airlines from this year. IATA has said the move would impact India's tourism prospects and hurt the country's economic growth.

In a letter addressed to Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary R.N.Choubey, Blair Cowles, regional director, safety and flight operations, IATA—which represents 265 global airlines—said the increase in airport charges should have been made after consulting all the stakeholders.

“As you would be well aware, Airport and ANS (Air Navigation Services) charges must be in line with the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) tenets of user-consultation, cost-relatedness, transparency and non-discrimination. These core principles have been missing from the recent airport and ANS charges increases in India,” Cowles wrote to Choubey.

The letter, made public recently by IATA, was originally sent on December 9. It said the value of India's aviation till 2014 was $72 billion per year or 3.4 per cent of GDP. This is in addition to the eight million jobs from direct, indirect and induced benefits of tourism, infrastructure investment and trade.

“Increases in charges without proper consultation has the potential to rapidly erode competitive advantage and jeopardise the growth prospect of the tourism industry and wider economy of India,” the IATA letter said.

The group said there should be at least a four-month consultation window and notice of revision should be given to airlines and their representative organisations. IATA has sought an indefinite deferment of the new charges from the ministry.

"As per the latest orders, it has been communicated that the new charges will be levied from December 16 to March 31. There is no change in that and it is unlikely to be changed now,'' said a DGCA official.

India receives a substantial amount of revenue as overflying charges from airlines flying between destinations in Europe and Southeast Asia. The new charges will add about 1-1.5 per cent on airlines bills, an estimate by the Civil Aviation Ministry suggested.

The ministry officials, however, said these charges are used to fund air navigation services like installing hi-tech radars and equipment, which ultimately help bring more productivity and cost savings to the airlines.

This browser settings will not support to add bookmarks programmatically. Please press Ctrl+D or change settings to bookmark this page.
Topics : #aviation

Related Reading