Thiruvananthapuram airport raises user fee 50%, aircraft landing fee 190%

They will come into effect on July 1 and remain in force until March 31, 2027

Thiruvananthapuram: Passengers have to shell out more money to travel to and from the Thiruvananthapuram airport as The Thiruvananthapuram Kerala International Airport Ltd (TKIAL), which manages and operates the airport in Kerala’s capital city, has decided to sharply raise user development fees (UDF) and landing charge of aircraft from July 1.

The  tariff revised by the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) will enable TKIAL, which is owned by billionaire Gautam Adani’s Adani Airport Holdings Ltd, a fully-owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises, to squeeze more money from international passengers, through the revised fees

The revised fees are part of the tariff order issued by AERA on June 21. They will come into effect on July 1 and remain in force until March 31, 2027.

The regulator has permitted only the Thiruvananthapuram airport to triple the landing fee for aircraft.

As per the revised fees, the user development fee for embarking domestic passengers will go up by 50 per cent from Rs506 to Rs 770, and for disembarking passengers, it will be Rs330 from July 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025. From April 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, domestic passengers departing from the airport will pay Rs840, while landing domestic passengers will be charged Rs360. In the subsequent financial year, the fees for domestic travellers will rise to Rs910, and 390 respectively.

International passengers will be levied twice the amount that domestic travellers are charged

For the first year, the landing charge for aircraft will increase from Rs309 to Rs890 per metric tonne (MT) of aircraft weight. In the subsequent financial years, this charge will rise to Rs1,400 per MT and Rs1,650 per MT, which represents an increase of approximately 4.5 times and 5.5 times, respectively.