Flyers lose out on airport fee refund

NEW DELHI: Ananya Dasgupta booked her flight ticket from Delhi to Chennai in the beginning of December for her journey on January 5. As per a recent directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) order, the airline should have refunded Rs 100 to Dasgupta since airport development fees (ADF) at Delhi's IGI Airport has been slashed by half since January 1, 2013. Airline staff at the airport, however, threw up their hands claiming they had not been informed of a cut in ADF.

The Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) ordered halving of the ADF from Rs 200 to Rs 100 for domestic departures and from Rs 1,300 to Rs 600 for international departures from IGI Airport. The DGCA directed airlines to refund the money to those who had already purchased tickets. But passengers who might want their money back have a tough fight ahead.

Airlines say passengers will have to apply for a refund and wait for it to come through. "The process is an administrative nightmare for us. We cannot set up (more) counters at the airport as that will delay flights. There is not enough space or staff to deal with this issue. The cost for refunding this money would be more than Rs 100 for us. We have put systems in place but the passengers will have to apply for a refund. It is not an automatic process," said an official of a private airline.

The administrative hurdle is perhaps behind the silence of airlines. Not only are ground staff unaware, there are no ads offering refunds, hence few passengers are asking for their money back. Mahesh Singh, who had read about the order just before he travelled from Delhi to Dubai on January 14, asked for a refund of Rs 600 at the airport but the airline claimed to have no information about it. "I argued for 15 minutes but then it was getting embarrassing and I let it be," he said.

On the other hand, the process in place for claiming the refund is so cumbersome that few will consider it worth their while. Air India, for instance, says a passenger must go to their city office with their boarding card and a copy of the ticket to apply for the refund. In Delhi, AI's city office is near Safdarjung Airport. A couple of trips to the office will cost far more than the ADF discount.

International passengers might as well forget about the refund as the city of their final destination might not even have a local airline office.

A similar situation arose in 2011 when the high court suspended ADF collection for a few months. Even then, money collected on pre-booked tickets should have been refunded but no efforts were made. However, when the ADF was re-instated from December 1 that year and DGCA ordered that money be collected only on those tickets that were booked post November 30, airlines spared no effort in calling up passengers and demanding the extra amount.

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