Passengers travelling out of GMR Hyderabad International Airport may have to shell out user development fee again with the High Court in Hyderabad ruling in favour of GMR Infrastructure Ltd.

GMR Infrastructure received a favourable order from the High Court which has ruled that GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd can collect tariff as was being done in the past.

GMR Hyderabad airport, which recently crossed the magical figure of handling 10 million passengers in a year, used to charge a fee of ₹430 for domestic and ₹1,700 crore from international passengers departing from the airport.

Pursuant to the policy direction by Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) to adopt Hybrid Till with 30 per cent cross subsidisation for Hyderabad airport and pending compliance, GHIAL had filed a writ petition with High Court at Hyderabad seeking approval to collect tariff/airport charges as was being collected prior to April 1, 2014.

On October 6, 2015, the High Court at Hyderabad has issued a ruling in favour of GHIAL, which will now enable Hyderabad airport to collect tariff as was earlier collected. However, it is not clear as to how GMR plans to go about after this order.

As per Hybrid Till, the airport operator combines aeronautical and non-aeronautical revenues, while arriving at the overall revenues. As per the Ministry order, there is need to cross subsidise 30 per cent of the revenue — that is the Hybrid Till with 30 per cent.

However, it is not clear as to when the airport operator GMR would consider new tariffs.

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