Mes: noviembre 2018

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AAI to pick 51% stake in Dholera International Airport

Construction of the much-awaited Dholera International Airport (DIAC) is likely to begin early next year with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) approving a decision earlier this month to take a 51% stake in the project. AAI will be inducted on the board of DIAC at the latter’s upcoming board meeting in December, Jai Prakash Shivahare, MD, Dholera Industrial City Development, told FE. While AAI will hold 51%, the Gujarat government will hold 33% and the central government, through the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMICDC), will hold a 16% stake in DIAC.
Construction of the first phase of the airport is expected to cost roughly Rs 2,000 crore.

The airport will have a runway of 3,000 metres, a terminal building and other peripheral facilities, Shivahare said, adding that the construction is expected to begin sometime in Q1FY20. The first phase will be built to cater to a capacity of 1.1-5.5 million passengers annually which DIAC expects to reach in 2029. Shivahare said depending on the growth in passenger traffic, DIAC will build a second runway of 4,000 metres in the second phase, designed to cater to 6.5-12.5 million passengers annually, till 2035. The third phase of expansion will accommodate 13.8-25.8 million passengers annually, designed to last till 2044.
AAI is yet to decide on whether construction of the airport will be bid out via a PPP model or for a cash contract.
Shivahare added there is also a plan to build an aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility, given the lack of such facilities in the country. “Obviously, the first requirement is to have a functional airport for passenger movement. We will look at the setting up the MRO shortly thereafter,” Shivahare said.

Source: Financial Express

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Regulations are eased opening expanded US Airport Privatisation programme to any airport

The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) reauthorisation bill which was passed by Congress this autumn contained a provision which passed under the radar outside the United States of America (USA). It considerably expanded what was known as the Airport Privatisation Pilot Programme, enacted by Congress in 1996 and then slightly expanded from five to 10 airports in 2012.

Summary:

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has expanded the country’s airport privatisation programme;
Any airport can now be leased without limit and FAA grants available to analyse any potential leases;
But there has been no change yet on airline double super-majority authorisation rule.
Airport privatisation was a new and untried idea in the US in 1996, and the regulations framing the original pilot programme reflected that. It permitted only five airports to be leased in the long-term. Only one of those could be a ‘large hub’ according to the FAA’s interpretation and at least one must be a general aviation (GA) airport. It also imposed a lengthy and convoluted approval process, by airlines serving the airport in question and by the FAA.

The first change made by Section 160 of the FAA reauthorisation act removes the numerical and categorical limitations. Henceforth, any US airport may be long-term leased, and without limit. That means the situation that prevailed for six years, when the City of Chicago held the only “slot” in the programme reserved for a large hub airport (Midway), cannot re-occur. The proposed lease of one large hub cannot hold up or preclude other large hubs from seeking to do likewise.

Accordingly, the programme has been renamed the Airport Investment Partnership Programme and that ‘partnership’ insertion suggests the future importance of public-private partnerships (P3s). Moreover, the term ‘privatisation’ as used in the UK and some other European countries generally means the sale of all or part of the ownership of the airport in question although it can also refer to any financial involvement by a private company.

Since both the 1996 US pilot programme law and the 2018 revised version permit only long-term leases, these deals are inherently long-term P3s between the airport owner (city, county, state, etc.) and the private consortium that wins a competitive process to lease, improve, operate, and manage the airport.

Another important change is that henceforth long-term P3 leases can be structured in a way in which the public-sector partner has a part-interest in the special-purpose entity created to manage and operate the airport for the term of the lease. Such shared-control agreements are increasingly common in Europe, notably France and Germany.

Politically, that may reduce opposition to US airport P3 leases created by fear that the public entity will “lose control” of the airport (although that can be addressed in the long-term lease agreement by a range of negotiated performance measures, etc.).

Another highly significant change is that while the previous law permitted the FAA to exempt the airport owner from having to repay previous federal airport grants if it leased the airport, the new law automatically exempts the airport owner from having to do this. This removes an obstacle that increased the risk of potential US airport P3 deals compared to foreign ones.

In another small but important change, the new law will make it easier for airport owners to make serious assessments of whether to make use of long-term P3 leases. Doing this responsibly requires detailed legal and financial analysis, which is generally beyond the experience of city or state legal and financial staff. The new law allows the FAA to make grants of up to USD750,000 to any US airport that wishes to analyse whether, and how to go about, engaging in P3 leases under the Airport Investment Partnership Programme.

There is some disappointment that the new law did not change one provision of the original pilot programme that is considered a uniquely US obstacle to getting privatisation approval, namely the requirement for airline approval of the deal via a double super-majority. Specifically, 65% of all the airlines serving the airport must approve the deal terms and also airlines representing at least 65% of the annual landed weight at the airport. In other words a majority of airlines could approve a lease but it might be blocked by the largest of them in terms of movements.

The good news on this issue is that airlines involved with three such long-term P3 lease deals have accepted the negotiated deal terms that were acceptable to private-sector bidders. Those were Southwest Airlines at Midway Airport before the procedure was withdrawn, American Airlines and JetBlue Airways at San Juan International in Puerto Rico and American, JetBlue and United Airlines at Westchester County, NY, a procedure still in limbo. So there is at least historical precept in such cases.

The airports currently in the privatisation programme that are outstanding appear in the table below. in the case the definition ‘Outstanding’ can mean a long time:

Source: The Blue Swan Daily

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Low-cost Airlines Want to Join in on the Sofia Airport Concession

The deadline for submitting tenders for the Sofia Airport concession was extended due to the great interest of the candidates in the procedure. This was announced by Minister of Transport Rosen Zhelyazkov during the forum «Entrepreneurship, Development, Perspectives», which took place in Pomorie. In his words, specifically interested in the airport are budget airlines, reports money.bg

«The interest of the low-cost companies at Sofia Airport is enormous, many of the big European operators are asking questions, so we extended the bidding period in the concession procedure by January 29,» Zhelyazkov said, quoted by the GERB press office. The Secretary of State has not identified specific companies that have shown interest in the airport concession. The most significant presence at the airport in the capital by low-cost companies are the Hungarian WizzAir and the Irish Ryanair . Flights from and to Sofia also have the British EasyJet. However, these companies do not develop business as airport operators.

So far confirmed interest in the concession comes from the British company Manchester Airport Group (MAG), which confirmed in October that they will participate in the procedure together with the Chinese Beijing Engineering Engeneering Group. The company operates three airports in the UK – Manchester, London Stansted and the East Midlands.

Later it became clear that the Spanish AENA would also be included in the race for Sofia Airport. It is the world’s largest airport operator by number of passengers, managing 46 airports in Spain, holding a share of Luton Airport in London and managing another 15 airports in South America. As possible participants in the procedure were also the Spanish Ferrovial, which manages airports in the UK and has participated in Heathrow, as well as several French companies. They are Bouygues, as well as Groupe ADP, which operates 26 airports, including Paris’ Charles de Gaulle, Orly and Boulevard. Participation can also be made by the airport operator in Burgas and Varna Fraport, as well as by another French company – Alliance Avia. According to the information, there could also be a Greek side with the company Terna, as well as with Italian companies.

Source: Novonite

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Argentina: Inversión de $6.000 M para el aeropuerto de Córdoba

El Ministro de Transporte, Guillermo Dietrich, anunció hoy en el aeropuerto Ambrosio Taravella de la capital cordobesa la ampliación y remodelación de la terminal a través de una inversión de $6.000 millones. Las obras, a cargo de Transporte y AA2000, se ejecutarán en los próximos 2 años y generarán 3.300 empleos

Las obras incluyen la ampliación de los dos edificios actuales, con nuevos mostradores de atención al cliente o puestos de Check-In, nuevas mangas o pasarelas, áreas más amplias de espera y áreas de embarque, nuevas cintas de equipaje, entre otras mejoras. También la pista quedará completamente repavimentada, con nuevas calles de rodaje y balizamiento y se triplicarán los estacionamientos, se sumará un nuevo edificio para bomberos y tecnología de aeronavegación.

En los últimos 3 años, la terminal cordobesa se consolidó como un hub de vuelos, multiplicando su número de pasajeros y cantidad de vuelos locales e internacionales.

Mientras que en 2015 solo utilizaron la terminal 1,5 millones de pasajeros, en 2018 se llegó a los 3,3 millones. En octubre, el crecimiento fue del 27% en el mercado doméstico respecto del año pasado, y en septiembre los pasajeros internacionales crecieron 20%.

Las conexiones de vuelos domésticas eran 6 en 2015 y hoy se triplicaron a 19 mientras que las conexiones internacionales desde y hacia la terminal cordobesa son 15.

Source: El Economista. Argentina