Passengers travelling between metros as also big towns that are well connected by flights could soon roughly end up paying a marginal Rs 60 extra each to board a flight when the government will on Friday announce a likely levy of Rs 8,000 per domestic departure on airlines to fund its ambitious regional connectivity scheme.
Passengers will almost certainly have to pay an extra marginal amount since airlines are extremely likely to pass on any fresh burden on to passengers. The levy is likely to be made on airlines for flights on main trunk routes which are category-I routes connecting major cities and big towns with each other.
Government sources told this newspaper that if the airlines pass on the cost of the levy to the passengers — as they are likely to do — the approximate cost would work out to about Rs 60 per passenger if the load factor (occupancy on flights) is about 70 per cent. The fine print will however be made available on Friday in a draft on the Regional Connectivity Scheme that the government will unveil.
Just recently, in a major push for reforms in the civil aviation sector cleared by the Union Cabinet, the Modi government had given the go-ahead for India’s first-ever civil aviation policy since Independence that had provides for fares to be capped at Rs 2,500 per hour under a proposed Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) between a “served” airport (where flights operate) and an “unserved” airport (airports in small towns with no air connectivity in the recent past).
The RCS will be funded through a “viability gap funding” (VGF), essentially a subsidy through a small levy per departure on all domestic routes other than flights to small towns and smaller aircraft. The government had insisted that this levy will not be much and would be specified soon.
