In a country where infrastructure projects take inordinately long to complete, it is rare, if not unheard of, for the politician who lays the foundation stone to preside over its completion. The inauguration of New Delhi's new, gigantic airport terminal by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday a record 37 months after he laid the foundation stone is a singular achievement in speed. But more than that, it has given the country an airport that is by many an assessment as good as any in the world. It had been a matter of great irony that the capital of a country with the ninth largest aviation market in the world should have an airport ranked a dismal 101 in terms of Air Service Quality performance. That was in 2007. With a vibrant private-public partnership taking over the modernisation of the airport, New Delhi has since improved that ranking to 21. The new Rs.12,700 crore Terminal-3 (T-3) should let it break into the world's top ten. The terminal has what it takes: 78 aerobridges and 168 check-in counters, automated baggage handling facilities, and security systems. And these promise to deliver passengers a service equal to the best in the world. From a strategic standpoint, T-3 will let New Delhi stake a claim to being a major international hub, with Air India planning to fully capitalise on this asset. Given the 35 million international passengers it generates, India and its airlines have let slip the opportunity to make this country the hub for international travel — allowing cities in west Asia and south-east Asia instead to thrive on India's travellers. This was due as much to a lack of good transit facilities at the country's airports as it was to the frailty of country's airlines. At least one of the issues now stands resolved.
It is to be hoped that the high standards of service quality the new terminal has set will be adopted by other airports round the country. Prime Minister Singh referred to the setting up of the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority to deal with matters relating to the new and modernised airports, including the levy of user charges. That holds the key. When airport developers invest so heavily in building such a facility, they will seek a viable return on that investment. That demand must be balanced with the need to keep air travel affordable and the sensitivities about passengers being asked to pay stiff airport charges. The Authority needs to engage both the developers and user agencies while fixing the levies. At airports elsewhere, non-aeronautical revenues come to shore up the balance sheet; Indian airports may need to turn to them as well.
