Write to AERA about proposed airport charge hikes at Bangalore

The Bengaluru International Airport Ltd. (BIAL), which operates the Bangalore airport, is proposing hikes in User Development Fees (UDF) of up to 750%!!!

From the existing Rs. 231.40, BIAL has proposed to the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA), revised UDF of Rs. 1,729.43. Even international passengers will see an almost doubling of their UDF from the existing Rs. 952.30 to Rs. 1,700, and the operator would like a 6% year on year automatic increase.

The CEO of Teamlease, one of India's largest HR companies and a frequent flier, in a recent newspaper article complained

Bangalore airport doesn't have clients but hostages who are currently forced to pay ......

AERA has put out a consultation paper, and has already conducted a stakeholders consultation meeting on this issue. Minutes of the meeting can be read here. AERA has called for submissions on this topic.

While the government favours a single-till system, where all income is clubbed and then fees are decided, BIAL, like all other airports in India, wants a dual-till system, where only aeronautical revenue is considered, and all non-aero revenue is not. Quite naturally, there is a huge difference of almost 100% in the UDF based on the differing till systems.

For more detailed understanding of single-till and double-till system we recommend reading here, here, and here

Bangalore Aviation urges you to please read the consultation paper even though it is 300+ pages, and send your submissions to AERA before 19-September-2013.

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Bangalore Aviation site changes: Your feedback is requested

Dear Readers

Over the last few weeks, we at Bangalore Aviation have been trying a few tweaks here and there.

We invite your feedback on whether the site is the same, better, worse? What can we do to improve?

You may notice we have trimmed the footer of the article and replaced with recommendations which are powered by the Disqus comment system and the Outbrain widget. Do you find this helpful?

Readers who get the daily e-mail would have been getting a summary instead of the whole article. We have switched back to a full article for you to experience the difference.

Do you prefer summaries or do you prefer the full article?

What are your views on Bangalore Aviation as a site? What do you like about us? What do you want us to remove?

Please do send back comments via the comment system or by e-mail to ba [at] bangaloreaviation [dot] com.


Thanks in advance

Devesh Agarwal
Editor and Publisher

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Your opinion: Topic of the week: Will the 787 Dreamliner revive Air India's fortunes?

After much delay Air India has finally taken delivery of its first Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft.

The airline has taken out full page advertisements in most major newspapers across the nation, extolling the virtues of the aircraft.

There are many short-comings at the airline that need correcting. The most important being political and bureaucratic meddling and micro-management of airline operation. This meddling is showing up in the form of an idle Boeing 777-200LR fleet, which has a very poor seat configuration resulting in imbalanced operating economics. The procurement of these aircraft were forced on the airline by political bosses. The employees of Air India are not blameless with poor and indifferent attitude and militancy in high gear.

Can the Dreamliner salvage the fortunes of Air India? Share your thoughts. Post a comment.

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Your views: Topic of the week: The mess at Air India

For the last week members of the Indian Pilots Guild are causing huge losses to the national carrier Air India, by going on strike.

On CNN IBN noted journalist Karan Thapar interviewed the civil aviation minister Mr. Ajit Singh. Mr. Singh was candid, agreeing to the failures of the carrier, even admitting that government had no business running any service business, especially a highly specialised one like an airline.

Despite these candid admissions, Mr. Singh could offer no logical explanation let alone a justification to the continuous plowing of tax payer money in to the struggling airline and the maintaining of the status quo.



This week Bangalore Aviation invites your thoughts on the conundrum that is the government's management of Air India.

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Updates to Bangalore Aviation - Feedback requested

My sincere thanks to all the visitors of Bangalore Aviation.

Over the last two weeks you will observe that I have implemented changes in the site. I seek your feedback and comments on these changes. Good, great, bad or ugly.

Snap Shots

I installed a tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

DISQUS Comments

The commenting system has been vastly improved with the addition of DISQUS. Hierarchical commenting now available, as well as a re-blog facility. If you would like to do a "You Tube", there is even a facility for recording your comments via video.

A multi-tab widget with recent comments, prolific people, and most popular articles has been added.

RSS Feeds and E-Mail subscriptions.

As previous, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds or subscribe via e-mail using the icons at the top of the page.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Devesh

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