New Delhi: June 5, 2008: 0900hrs
The blossoming civil aviation industry in India, which has made air travel so much cheaper after 60 years of state monopoly, is set to lose 8000 crore rupees (or 800 million rupees) this year: the news.
The primary problem is the high cost of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) – which is monopolistically supplied by the government, and upon which there are high taxes, which keep on rising.
A secondary problem must be the “congestion” at important airports like Mumbai and Delhi, because of which planes have to keep flying for up to 50 minutes extra, circling the airport, waiting for clearance to land.
In my view, just as the Maruti 800 or the Tata Nano are called the “people’s car”, these new low-cost airlines should be billed as the “people’s airlines” – and encouraged to grow.
In such a large country, competitive civil aviation is the best way to travel – faster, cheaper and safer than railways. They should be allowed to out-compete the railways (which is what happened in the US). Instead, the government is working hard to ensure that Laloo’s unsafe trains remain in business.
My recent Goa-Delhi flight cost 2000 rupees – but taxes added another 2,750 rupees to it, and I had to fork out almost 5k!
There used to be a lot of talk on “cross subsidies” among socialist economists once. That is why diesel was always subsidized, as is kerosene today.
Maybe we should all demand a subsidy on ATF!
The blossoming civil aviation industry in India, which has made air travel so much cheaper after 60 years of state monopoly, is set to lose 8000 crore rupees (or 800 million rupees) this year: the news.
The primary problem is the high cost of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) – which is monopolistically supplied by the government, and upon which there are high taxes, which keep on rising.
A secondary problem must be the “congestion” at important airports like Mumbai and Delhi, because of which planes have to keep flying for up to 50 minutes extra, circling the airport, waiting for clearance to land.
In my view, just as the Maruti 800 or the Tata Nano are called the “people’s car”, these new low-cost airlines should be billed as the “people’s airlines” – and encouraged to grow.
In such a large country, competitive civil aviation is the best way to travel – faster, cheaper and safer than railways. They should be allowed to out-compete the railways (which is what happened in the US). Instead, the government is working hard to ensure that Laloo’s unsafe trains remain in business.
My recent Goa-Delhi flight cost 2000 rupees – but taxes added another 2,750 rupees to it, and I had to fork out almost 5k!
There used to be a lot of talk on “cross subsidies” among socialist economists once. That is why diesel was always subsidized, as is kerosene today.
Maybe we should all demand a subsidy on ATF!
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