Despite being geographically located in an ideal position to serve as a hub for international business traffic, India continues to wait for an infrastructure policy permitting FBOs to thrive and prosper

India, along with China, is poised to show impressive growth vectors in the civil aviation domain. The figures bandied about in the Indian context are exciting and sound plausible. However, civil aviation experts pose a caveat; the regulatory framework has to change, and the infrastructure has to be brought up to support the expected and inexorable growth. That these two areas have remained the bane of Indian civil aviation for decades is accepted by everyone familiar with the industry. The aircraft numbers owned or leased by Indian companies remain uninspiring, despite the rationale of economic growth being interrelated to civil aviation. Notwithstanding the small number of aircraft flying in and out of our airports, supporting infrastructure remains inadequate and inefficient. One of the weakest columns for the airport support remains the near absence of fixed base operators (FBOs) for general aviation and non-scheduled operators (for the purpose of this article, the term general aviation includes business aviation as well as non-scheduled operations).

The US Air Commerce Act of 1926 first made a distinction between mobile teams that supported aircraft as they moved from one venue to another, and those that remained at one airport and provided support to aircraft plying at that airport (hence the term FBO). The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) defines FBO as “a commercial business granted the right by the airport sponsor to operate on an airport and provide aeronautical services such as fuelling, hangaring, tie-down and parking, aircraft rental, aircraft maintenance, flight instruction, etc”. As scheduled airlines are big enough to cater for their operations at all the bases they operate to and do not need to outsource support, the FBO is a support concept related to general aviation.

The US currently has more than 5,000 listed FBOs for the 20,000 airports across the nation. Most of them provide all of the services listed in the FAA definition above; indeed, many go beyond that. A typical FBO would offer a host of services (see Box) and meet every need of general aviation operation to the airport they were located at. While the term FBO is well-defined and the model well-developed in the US, in India, the concept has remained undernourished. The DGCA official site has no mention of FBOs under “Operators”. Indeed, the term FBO has been used in the Indian context only in two cases. In February 2010, Universal Aviation was permitted to provide services somewhat akin to FBO at the Mumbai International Airport. Media was quick to brand it an FBO essentially because Universal was a company providing FBO services outside India. However, in India the scope of services was limited; for instance, fuel—a major share of the FBO business abroad—remained outside the ambit of the Mumbai FBO. Moreover, the charges for services provided were so excessive (partly due to the high rate of royalty exacted by the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL)) that opposition from the industry was instant and loud. Currently, Celebi NAS provides services to all general aviation and scheduled operators in Mumbai. However, Mumbai is not the best of hosts as far as visiting aircraft are concerned. Recently, MIAL imposed a penalty on aircraft overstaying permission granted to them (usually not longer than a day or two); the rates were so high (starting from Rs. 1,000 an hour for a C90/ B200/ PC 12 type to Rs. 15,000 per hour for an A 319) that the Business Aircraft Operators Association (BAOA) is taking recourse to legal means in pursuit of redressal.

Later that year, in June, the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) permitted Shaurya Aviation Private Limited (SAPL) to establish a FBO in Delhi. The charges proposed were exorbitant and the services diminutive. Initially, there was apprehension amongst the general aviation operators that a full scale FBO model (including maintenance, ground handling, passenger handling, etc) would be forced upon them at extortionate prices. This did not come about but SAPL now had a monopoly over the general aviation facility; no general aviation departure could take place without having to transit through the “general aviation lounge”, and the rates for the handling and nominal usage of facilities was prohibitive. After some downward movement in the rates originally announced, general aviation operators unwillingly accepted the regime. As an illustration, an aircraft operator was obliged to use a “ferry” vehicle at the rate of Rs. 2,000 per trip (which could be as short as a few hundred metres) to drop crew, cabin crew and passengers. Moreover, the FBO terminal was located in the old domestic departure building (Terminal 1D) and in the first few months of operation, for international departures, immigration and customs formalities one still had to go through at Terminal 3 which was quite some distance away. As suddenly as Shaurya had been given the FBO contract, it was withdrawn one fine morning and Cambata Aviation, another company, replaced Shaurya. The exorbitant rates charged for general aviation aircraft (including those based at Delhi) are effectively received in advance by DIAL by way of a security deposit; a letter issued in July 2012 by DIAL to all general aviation operators asks them to immediately make a security deposit of “ Rs. 10,00,000 or two months’ operation cost (to be calculated at peak two months) whichever is higher”.

As can be seen, far from introducing FBOs to make life easier for general aviation, MIAL and DIAL are clamping down on general aviation at their respective airports. Interestingly, the term FBO is not used (even by the media) in the context of any other airport in India. Bangalore International Airport is yet to have a distinctive and exclusive handler or terminal for general aviation. Perhaps there is inadequate motivation as a substantial proportion of the general aviation traffic favours the HAL airport whose location within the city is convenient to the passengers as well as the crew on layovers. A similar situation accrues at Hyderabad where the old airport at Begumpet permits better access (as compared to the new Hyderabad International Airport at Shamsabad) to the city as it is located within the city.