DIAL to Charge Airport Development Fee(ADF)

NEW DELHI: Passengers who book flight tickets on or after December 1 for both international and domestic travel from Delhi till May 2013 will have to shell out extra money. The IGI airport management will start levying an Airport Development Fee (ADF) on each passenger who flies out of the IGI Airport to the tune of Rs 1,413 per international passenger and Rs 221 on each domestic passenger. Passengers who have already booked tickets for travel on or after December 1 will not be required to pay the ADF.

Tickets are also likely to get more expensive with fuel prices recording an average increase in of Rs 2,700 per kilolitre, effective from December 1. Airlines will incorporate this increase in ticket prices as well.

The decision to not charge ADF from passengers who have already purchased air tickets was taken by the civil aviation ministry and directorate general of civil aviation after airlines complained that they would have to collect the ADF from each passenger who had not paid so far when they reported for check-in.

"It has been decided to collect ADF only on tickets that are issued from December 1 so that we can avoid passengers having to queue up at the airport to pay the fee. Airlines had said that it would become a logistical nightmare for them to collect the amount which is not even a round figure and tender change to the hundreds of passengers who have already booked their tickets," said a senior ministry official.

Some airlines, like Air India, had already started collecting ADF since the third week of November but sources say that this money will not be refunded.

"There was no order from either the ministry or DGCA to collect ADF even though Delhi International Airport (P) Ltd (DIAL) had announced the implementation of the fee from December 1. However, if some airlines have 1, already collected the amount under the head of ADF, they will have to submit the money to Airports Authority of India," said highly placed sources.

DIAL had started collecting ADF from passengers since March 2009 but an order from the Delhi high court had stalled the exercise in June this year. The Airport Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) finally passed an order on November 16 that permitted DIAL to restart collection of ADF from December 1 for a period of 18 months.

"The ADF is Rs 1,300 for international passengers and Rs 200 for domestic passengers with an additional 10.3% service tax. We had initially been allowed to collect it for a period of 36 months starting March 2009 and have now received an extension of 18 months. This is the first phase of collection through which we hope to bridge our funding gap by Rs 1,230.27 crore. A cost of Rs 701 crore that would be incurred by DIAL from April 2010 would be recovered in phase-II of the ADF collection from June 2013 to February 2014," said DIAL officials. Source:Times Of India

Turkish Airlines eyes return to Benghazi

Turkish Airlines will begin operating flights to Benghazi if circumstances allow, Turkish Airlines General Manager Temel Kotil said Sunday.

“There was some damage at the Benghazi airport; once it is repaired, the flights will start. We would start today if it were available. Right now, the businessmen are facing difficulties,” Kotil told a group of journalists in Cairo while waiting for the Foreign Ministry officials’ contacts in Egypt ahead of the ministry-led visit to Libya. After the flight ban to Libya’s capital Tripoli, Turkish Airlines stopped all flights to the city.

In response to whether or not the national carrier will resume flights to Tripoli, Kotil said, “If conditions allow, we will fly everywhere.

“We are reaching out not only to the Turks, but to the entire world,” said Kotil, who was among the delegation to visit Libya. “We started flights to Basra. In addition to the Iraqi cities of Arbil and Baghdad, Turkish Airlines will begin flights to the Iraqi Shiite shrine city Najaf next week and later to Suleymaniye and Mosul. We will continue to operate new lines and extend our network,” he said.

It was speculated that Turkish Airlines reduced its number of flights to Syria because of the country’s political unrest. “We didn’t reduce the number,” said Kotil. “There has been a 25 percent decrease in the number of passengers,” he said, noting that the problem was a “temporary” one. “We are flying to Aleppo and Damascus, and we have never stopped our flights,” Kotil told reporters. “Turkish Airlines increased its flights to another politically unrest country, Yemen. The number of weekly flights to Yemen has increased from two to four. Now we are planning to fly to Yemen everyday via Jeddah,” he said. “There has been a lot of demand from Saudi Arabia as well. We are expanding everywhere to establish a network.”
Source: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com

Fly cheap to Singapore

KOLKATA: Soon flying down to Singapore from the city may get cheaper than to Mumbai and Delhi, or even Bangalore. The Singapore Airlines is working on a plan to introduce a low-cost module, and a Kolkata-connection is very much on the cards.

Singapore Airlines chief executive Goh Choon Phong said the decision had been unanimously taken at a board meeting at the airline headquarters. While its primary market will be key destinations in South-East Asia, it is also eyeing three cities in India, including Kolkata.

Indian LCC Air India Express operates to Singapore four days-a-week. Sources said this, coupled with a steady loss of passengers to other LCCs like Air Asia and China Eastern, had led to Singapore Airlines considering a low-cost flight between Kolkata and Singapore.

"Once Air Asia or China Eastern picks up a passenger who has to travel beyond these destinations, it is a Thai or Chinese carrier that benefits. To retain onward customers and attract budget tourists to Singapore, an LCC carrier is critical," an aviation industry expert said.

Though a firm decision is yet to be taken, an airline source said Kolkata was very much on the radar. He further added that it would compensate for the loss of seats on the parent service. Last September, Singapore Airlines had pared its flights to Singapore City and Kolkata from six days-a-week to four days. It also altered the aircraft from Boeing 777-200 aircraft with an Airbus 330 aircraft that led to a slash in economy class seats from 293 to 25
Source: Times of India

More flights to remote areas likely

The aviation ministry is planning to expand the scope of existing route dispersal guidelines for airlines that define a dozen key metro routes from the region according to air traffic

Indian carriers may be asked to increase connectivity to remote areas on the region inside a move that could raise prices for airlines even as it aims to evenly distribute the growth in domestic air traffic, which crossed the 52mn mark last year. The aviation ministry is planning to expand the scope of existing route dispersal guidelines for airlines that define a dozen key metro routes from the region according to air traffic. Airlines need to ply at least 10% of their total metro flights on routes covering destinations that are not well connected and are a smaller amount profitable, including Jammu and Kashmir, the North-East, Lakshadweep, and also the Andaman and Nicobar islands. "The targeted traffic has elevated more than the years and there is a situation for revising these metro routes. Kochi-Bangalore and Bangalore-Hyderabad are also at par in terms of targeted traffic now," mentioned a ministry official, who declined being named. "DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) is getting asked to appear into it and rework."

The regulator defines high-traffic metro routes currently as Mumbai-Bangalore, Kolkata-Delhi, Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Bangalore, Mumbai-Delhi, Kolkata-Chennai, Mumbai-Hyderabad, Delhi-Bangalore, Mumbai-Chennai, Delhi-Hyderabad, Mumbai-Thiruvananthapuram and Delhi-Chennai. If, for example, Kochi-Bangalore and Hyderabad-Bangalore are added to this list, the amount of flights that airlines ply on a smaller amount profitable routes will simultaneously increase. Civil aviation secretary Nasim Zaidi needs the definition being widened to cover such routes, the ministry official said. In 2009, DGCA had banned national airlines from buying seat-miles from so-called regional carriers to meet regulatory requirements, as Mint reported on 24 April. Wadia Group's low-fare carrier GoAir bought seats from Gurgaon-based MDLR Airlines Pvt. Ltd in 2008 after it was unable to meet route dispersal requirements as it was focused on just flying metro routes then.

Most national airlines including GoAir prefer these metro routes, which provide far better passenger targeted traffic and yields, besides helping to save prices as aircraft maintenance facilities require not be based at multiple airports. Any move to widen the metro route definition is likely to force all airlines to rework their schedules in line on the new guidelines, that are likely to come up for consultation soon. An official having a domestic carrier confirmed how the matter has been discussed with airlines, but called it illogical and against the recommendations on the Naresh Chandra panel report of 2003 over a aviation sector. The report, offered over a aviation ministry website, had advised that "route dispersal guidelines need to be abolished" and airlines need to be allowed to assistance the routes of their choice, according to commercial considerations.

It had also advised that "the federal government need to provide explicit subsidy support-preferably from the general exchequer and supplemented by a sector-specific cess of 5% on airfare and proceeds from the privatization of airports-for providing essential, but uneconomical services, and award it via a method of minimum subsidy bidding". The creation of a non-lapsable important air services fund was an ideal solution for this, it said. None of these recommendations had been employed so far. "Where there is no demand on Kolkata-Silchar, they want you to put jumbos. You happen to be forcing the industry being sick," mentioned the airline official. You'll find other constraints at such low-traffic destinations, he said. In Srinagar, for example, wherever the amount of daily flights have elevated drastically through the years, this official pointed offered are no night-landing facilities, leaving tiny scope for more flights to consume off or state following sunset.
Source: India Infoline