A day before their meeting with civil Praful Patel, airlines were in a confrontationist mood as they meticulously prepared their agenda for discussion.
BANGALORE: A day before their meeting with civil aviation minister Praful Patel, airlines were in a confrontationist mood as they meticulously prepared their agenda for discussion.
For one, they were not ready to let go of the congestion surcharge, which was introduced into airfares few months back to offset part of their losses due to delayed landings at airports.
“There is no way we can remove this charge. It can happen only if the congestion at airports is reduced,” said a senior executive of a low-cost airline.
According to an industry insider, the minister was under tremendous political pressure to reign in air fares and that is why he has agreed to meet the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) to negotiate issues pertaining to congestion surcharge and hike in peak hour airport charges, which the government is contemplating to impose from this month-end.
Airlines are seeing the minister’s plan to double the landing, navigation and parking charges during rush hours to deter them from flying during peak hours. They, however, are not ready to buckle in under such pressure.
“We will not allow the government to arm-twist us into shifting our flights to non-peak hours. Whatever extra cost that we will bear due to increased airport charges will be passed on to the consumers,” said an airline official.
Another airline executive suggested that any tinkering with the landing and navigational charges should be revenue-neutral for the airport operators as they were already making good income.
“With increased number of flights at most airports over the last few years, airports are earning healthy revenues and so there is an economic compulsion for them to increase current charges. If at all they want to do it to reduce congestion during peak hours, then they should do it in a way that the hike in the peak hour is equivalent to the cut in the non-peak hours. That way it will be revenue-neutral,” said a no-frill airline senior executive.
An aviation analyst said even if the government decided to incentivise airlines for operating flights in non-peak hours, the loads and yields would not be commercially viable for full-service carriers to reschedule their flights.
“We may see some of the budget carriers moving their flights to non-peak hours if the rates are halved, but it is unlikely that full services may do so,” said an anlayst from international broking house.
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