BANGALORE: Even after a delay of over 50 days and a cost over-run and revenue loss of more than Rs 300 crore, takeoff for the new Bengaluru International Airport Ltd (BIAL) is not on because of the whims of the Union civil aviation ministry.
Early on Wednesday, the countdown for the takeoff was set for midnight May 22.
But later in the evening, this was abruptly cancelled following a notification from the civil aviation ministry.
The ministry postponed the opening of the airport by 24 hours to May 23 midnight.
It did not cite any particular reason for pushing back inaugural date.
All the statement said was, “The central government hereby notifies that the Bengaluru
International Airport at Devanahalli would be commissioned with effect from 00.01 hours of 24th May, 2008, instead of 00.01 hours of 23rd May 2008 as notified earlier.”
That makes it four postponements of launch dates: March 28, May 11, May 22 and now May 23.
An exasperated Albert Brunner, CEO of BIAL, said, “We are taken by surprise. In fact, we have just closed a press conference communicating our preparedness for Thursday.
However, there is nothing we can do at this point. All our efforts are now towards minimising passenger and airline inconvenience owing to this postponement.”
Bangalore’s new airport has been embroiled in controversies even since the Rs 2,500 crore project began.
The first time the ministry delayed the takeoff, it said that the Airports Authority of India did not think that BIAL’s Air Traffic Control tower was fully ready.
Brunner has repeatedly said at several press briefings that the BIA has been in the state of preparedness since a long time.
The airport operator is also facing public interest litigation in the Karnataka High Court for the renegotiation of its contract with the central government on the issue of closing of the old airport (HAL) after the new airport begins operations.
BIAL has also been forced to forego user development fee (UDF) on domestic passengers for the first three months.
Back-of-the-envelope calculus pegs the airport’s UDF (Rs 675 per domestic passenger) loss at around Rs 300 crore for 140 days (50 days for delay + 90 days that it will not charge the levy), based on a handling capacity of 2,700 passengers per hour.
If the airport operates for 12 hours a day, then its UDF loss stands at Rs 2.19 crore per day.
Besides the UDF loss, Brunner says, the airport and its partners (concessionaires, retailers and others) were losing revenues of Rs 1.1 crore daily because of the delayed kickoff.
“The break-even period of the project will get stretched considerably because of this,” said Brunner.
