 "Airport economic agency plans ranking system")
“I think when incentive is performance-based it works the best, hence, we want to monitor the airports on a regular basis. This is the first part of a performance-based evaluation,” said S Machendranathan, chief of AERA.
At present, the performance of Indian airports is evaluated and ranked according to the Airport Service Quality rankings done by the Airports Council International (ACI) — a global body of major airports across the world. ACI counts Incheon, Zurich and Changi among its members. The annual rankings are done by ACI based on feedback from passengers, airlines and other stakeholders every quarter. It had adjudged Delhi Airport the best in the 25-40 million passenger per annum category for the past two years. “The ASQ ranking is annual and, hence, I believe it is not a true reflection of the airport’s performance. Airports need to be evaluated regularly,” Machendranathan said.
AERA plans to outsource the evaluation to an external agency, which will give daily feedback to the regulator. “Based on this feedback we plan to come out with a ranking of Indian airports every three months,” Machendranathan said. Among the various parameters that AERA plans to judge the airports on what would be the duration of check-ins, security check, friendliness of airport staff and facilities at the airports for the differently-abled. “We want to make our airports friendlier to the passengers and make their experiences better,” he said.
AERA was set up in 2009 under the Airport Economic Regulatory Act, 2008, essentially to fix tariff and monitor the quality of services provided by airports. AERA has often been taken to court by private airport operators over tariffs fixed by it. Recently, AERA came out with a tariff order for the Mumbai airport, which said the GVK-run airport will not be allowed to charge user development fee (UDF) from passengers from November 1 till 2019, despite objections from the operator.