The Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), a special purpose vehicle that operates the Delhi airport, has one of the lowest operating costs among the 16 airports of its size across the globe, according to an analysis by LeighFisher India Private Ltd — an aviation advisory services firm.
“Our analysis indicates Delhi’s (airport’s) operating costs are very low in relation to those of its peers in the sample, particularly when expressed in terms of terminal capacity,” says the advisory firm’s report.
“Even as our costs are one of the least, we are losing Rs 2 crore every day. The discontinuation of airport development fee has also impacted our revenue by Rs 56 crore a month,” said a GMR spokesperson.
Delhi airport charged Rs 200 for every domestic passenger and Rs 1,300 for every international passenger leaving the airport. These charges were discontinued after a court order. Of the 70,000 passengers catered to by the airport daily, around half are departures.
The airport is run by a consortium led by the Bangalore-headquartered GMR Group and comprising state-owned Airports Authority of India, Germany’s Fraport and Malaysian Airport Holdings. Delhi airport would take three more years to break even. DIAL had mandated LeighFisher to provide benchmark data for its talks with the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority.
The report compared the total operating costs, staff costs, total non-operation staff cost and maintenance costs at 16 airports across the world, including Singapore’s Changi Airport, London’s Heathrow Airport and the airports at Beijing and Hong Kong. Of the 16 airports, Delhi ranks 13th in terms of total costs per passenger (the airport ranked first has the highest cost).
“While the majority of the airports with higher cost bases are European and therefore, subject to operations with relatively high levels of staff remuneration, Delhi is also competitive in relation to Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing, where labour rates are closer to those in India,” said the report.
The GMR-operated airport ranks 13th and 12th in terms of staff costs and non-staff costs per passenger, respectively. “Non-staff costs generally account for around two-thirds of operating costs, though for Delhi airport, the relationship is around one fourth, emphasising very low levels of staff costs,” the report says.
“We feel it is correct to highlight the difficulties inherent in relying on capacity-based metrics, but the differences between the per-passenger and per-passenger capacity metrics say Delhi’s average total costs per passenger can be expected to fall in relative terms, as traffic builds up,” the report said.
DIAL had built a new terminal at the airport at a cost of Rs 12,700 crore, an escalation from the estimated cost of Rs 9,000 crore. The audit report of the cost escalation had said the airport developer had built 80,000 square metres more than the 470,000 square metres it was supposed to build under the master plan approved for the building by the government. According to the report, the cost estimate had included Rs 350 crore for a new air traffic control tower, which DIAL was yet to build.
