Passengers to pay baggage X-ray fee at Indira Gandhi International Airport from Feb 1
New Delhi: From February 1, passengers at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) have to pay a fee to get their checked-in bags scanned, the Times of India reported.
According to the report, Delhi International Airport (DIAL) will charge X-ray baggage fees ranging from Rs 110 to Rs 880 for domestic and $149.33 to $209.55 for international flights. This fee will be charged to airlines, which in turn will recover the same from passengers. This could mean passengers have to pay up to Rs 5 as X-ray charges for domestic flights while for international flights, this fee could range up to Rs 50 per passenger.
Domestic flights having seats up to 25, 50, 100 and 200 will have to pay Rs 110, Rs 220, Rs 495 and Rs 770 respectively while flights having more than 200 seats will have to pay Rs 880 fee, the daily said. For narrow body and transit international flights, this fee is $149.33 and for wide-body aircrafts, this fees will be $209.55.
The new charge will be a money-spinner for DIAL as IGIA handles almost 1,300 flights daily, the publication said.
Worth mentioning here that this is the second additional fee in the past two months which is imposed by DIAL. From last month, passengers flying out of IGIA are paying Rs 77 as passenger service fee (PSF)-facilitation (taxes extra) in place of the user development fee (UDF) of Rs 10 and Rs 45, which each outbound domestic and international flyer, respectively, had been paying since July 2017. This had meant a hike of Rs 67 and Rs 32 per domestic and international flyer, the daily said.
Dial remitted Rs 120 crore to the government last year following this the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) allowed the airport operator to charge this fee. This money was collected as passenger security fee (that flyers pay) and was used to buy baggage screening equipment.
AERA had “sought information from DIAL regarding details of baggage screening equipment bought from PSF and DIAL’s own fund separately. DIAL, on October 24, 2018, submitted that it had procured assets relating to baggage screening equipment worth Rs 119.66 crore from PSF and Rs 2.23 crore from DIAL’s own fund,” the daily quoted the AERA order as saying.
AERA then “stipulated DIAL will be entitled to charge X-ray baggage charges if it remits back the amount spent from PSF. The screening charges shall be applicable from the date of DIAL’s remittance of the required amount to PSF fund,” the order said.