- February 8, 2016, 11:53 AM
Making way for two recently announced FBOs, Delhi International Airport Ltd. (Dial) has evicted some 20 third-party operators and companies from their premises at the airport. The two FBOconcessionaires—Bird Worldwide Flight Services-ExecuJet and Indamer-MJets—have until March 31 to sign new contracts with tenants and based operators, AIN has learned. India's Business Aircraft Operators Association (BAOA) called the move a “monopoly” and took the issue to court. Operators are concerned because the concessionaires are sharing up to 65 percent of revenues with Dial, and this could substantially increase the costs of services rendered to them. Bird Worldwide Flight Services-ExecuJet and Indamer-MJets are also mandated to invest around $15 million each on the FBO terminal, lounges, hangars, fuel and parking.
“We are looking for transparency, quality and a betterment of small aircraft owners and operators to enable their competitiveness,” BAOA managing director R.K. Bali told AIN. Presently, operators based at the Delhi airport handle their own day-to-day airworthiness and base maintenance for their aircraft; this is expected to end under the new FBO structure.
Further, Bali said that no study had been conducted by Dial before releasing the tender on the viability of taking on only two operators versus the space available. “Mumbai’s two airports have [one fourth the] space of Delhi but have three to four maintenance service providers each. In addition, aircraft operators are allowed to do their own maintenance. Dial is clearly trying to monopolize maintenance services for aircraft based at Delhi,” he added.
“The consolidation of services will address security issues at the airside,” a vendor told AIN. “Presently there are too many contract workers and there needs to be some control.”
This was in the making for quite some time! Sad.
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