1. UDF is charged as a flat rate. Which in a way is fair, but it works to the disadvantage of the people who take short flights. UDF of Rs.600 on a Delhi ticket may only be 10% but on a Hyderabad or Chennai ticket of Rs.2300 it is almost 25%. The tolls too have to be realistic. If not, why have a difference between international and domestic UDF? Why not the same Rs.1,200?? Rs.1200 on an international ticket is only 1-3% of the ticket cost, why a domestic flyer should subsidise an international flyer or vice versa? So, obviously some rational was found to keep it different, so similar rational should be applicable to Shorter flights versus longer flights. Ideally, it should be a percentage of the ticket cost.

2. It is no ones case that Govt. should renege on promises made to BIAL, which is basically an assurance of ROI protection. As long as the assumed ROI is protected, in public interest some clauses can always be renegotiated.

Eg: There is patent law in India. In case a pharma company invents a drug for a fatal illness, that all of a sudden infects a few million people, and the company can’t produce it in large enough quantity at an reasonable cost, Govt. will be well within its right to force the pharma company to share the drug protected by law with other pharma companies.

3. The right method of renegotiating is not to coerce BIAL but give an alternative revenue model. In any case a 150km radius monopoly for 30 years is unlikely to survive a legal challenge.

Its TOI’s relentless propaganda, supported by mouthpieces like Kiran Shaw , Misra, et al (all of whom happen to live v far, sadly, from BIAL) that has caused these stupid issues to come up for discussion in the first place.

Unfortunately , there is no remedy, as TOIs competetion itself is trying to slowly clone the leader

R Ghai

Mebe if these IT companies pay some taxes and pay for theinfrastructure they use,t he city would be better half. We need more people who can work for the welfare of the city not barking dogs like naryan murthy who are more interested in lining their pockets at everybody’s expense.

As Koppal Haida mentioned, the original site for BIAL was Bidadi on mysore road. But our own Sin of the soil DG had it relocated to Devanahalli when he was the PM.

Please hold on to your dhotis! Just imagine the nightmare scenario of having to transit from a domestic flight to international ones! Besides HAL airport is next to ASTE which is a military establishment (they want full access to wanting to try out new things). The sooner the HAL airport closes, the better. Sure access to the new airport should be made simple. These are typical starting teething problems in India. HAL airport is a disgrace. It may provide a very convenient to access to a few ”protesters’ who make their way to Delhi to get a few awards now and then! As for protesters, they should start working with the government.

1 The pressure for having better connectivity has been there are all along. It is not that it has come up in the last few weeks or months. If these guys have pitched in late so what? Better late than never!! It is sad that our governments are doing so badly. Don’t blame these guys!!
2 “Free market” – when there is restrictions on airports within 150 KM, do you still call it a free market? NICE is a different case, there is already a 4 lane road, so if NICE has to survive then they will have to provide services that justify the extra money they charge. What is wrong in implementing the same logic for the airports?
3 I agree with you on this. Farmers should be made “stake-holders”. If you ask my view - they should be made stake holders in every SEZ for which their land is taken. But the point here is about Mr Gowda real intentions?
4 How will you defend this – what prevents someone from saying that you could have been funded by vested interests to write this article!!!! What point are you trying to make here. Is it not an attempt to sensationalize the issue? If you have some facts why don’t you share it?
5 No point is talking about “If”s and “But”s. Do you little bit and work towards solving the issues rather than questioning the incredibility of the involved people.

It is good to see that people who are not basically from Bangalore doing so much. The user charge that they are talking about is illogical. It will just kill the low cost airlines. In many cases the cost of the air ticket will be lesser than what it costs to get to the airport and pay the user charges!!

- Traffic forecast - There are multiple forecasts done by multiple agencies at different times. Naturally, there are numbers to support different views

- Contracts - All contracts will have clauses to re-negotiate and penalties to be paid in such scenario. It is not uncommon or bad to renogiate any contract

- Names mentioned above - All of them are well aware of far more details about the airport, potential travel issues etc. than projected here (or author’s perception). Solution for any problem depends on state of the problem (for e.g., 15 months back, solution to travel-to-airport is to build good approach road, but now that is not feasible and thus need to find alternate. So, please understand that there is no one-fixed solution for any problem at all times.

- In addition to putting useless cribs, why not propose some solutions and open it for debate…Rather than…..

Thanks, SS Karnadsha for a well-argued piece.

What MG Rao says makes eminent sense. Contracts can be renegotiated. If nothing else works, the Govt which already holds a 13% stake in the airport can offer to buyout the BIAL by paying for the rest 74% (13% is with AAI) plus a reasonable profit for the private players like Siemens/L&T. Let the government pay up for its laziness and stupidity.

Reneging the contract will set a bad and unjust precedent. We should not do that ; we are better than that. Having said the above, the access problem is real. It will be a nightmare to get to the airport. Electronics City(EC) to Devanahalli is more than 1/2 the road travel to Chennai from EC. So why bother ? It begs for a solution.

We all goofed up. HAL was to be closed but given the current situation the government should own up it’s faux pas with regard to the oversight and get the consortium to the table. We should not renege, but we cannot sit on our palms either ?

The options should include keeping HAL. But it should also include compensating the consortium for a percentage of “their loss” and making them pay for “their part” in the oversight — let’s be fair. As a part of the solution if there are benefits to having HAL for an additional year till we get the infrastructure ramped up (with the consortium being compensated for a breach and penalized for their part in the oversight) we can get thru this.
Sure, it will have it’s share of problems in terms of two airports who goes where et all, but if it helps and can be managed, why not ?

We erred, lets get our heads together and figure out a way. We need to relinquish the moral high grounds we are perched on and stop the name calling at the opposite rim of the canyon. We need to get down to the pits and think thru to come to a practical solution. Contracts are routinely ammended/altered, but for a price. What we need is not a renege, but an amendment to ensure the problems are alleviated for the general public.