Less than a month after the Mangalore air crash, the government has decided to levy Users Development Fees (UDF) from June 15 on passengers catching flights from five airports in the country including Mangalore. Apart from Mangalore, the other four airports are Visakhapatnam, Trichy, Udaipur and Amritsar. This means that air travel from these airports is set to get more expensive. All five are operated by the state-run Airports Authority of India (AAI). The civil aviation ministry has approved the proposal that was sent to it by the AAI, well-placed ministry sources have confirmed.
For Mangalore airport, each passenger catching a domestic flight from there will have to pay Rs 150 while passengers catching international flights will have to pay Rs 825 each as UDF.
For Visakhapatnam airport, the UDF levied on each passenger catching a domestic flight will be Rs 150. For Trichy airport, the Users Development Fees will be Rs 150 for a domestic flight and Rs 360 for catching an international flight.
For airports that have passenger traffic greater than 1.5 million passengers per year, the UDF approval is needed from the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA).
But for other airports such as Visakahapatnam, Udaipur, Amritsar, Trichy and Mangalore which have passenger traffic of less than 1.5 million passengers per year, the approval has to be given by the civil aviation ministry.