The Supreme Court’s Wednesday hearing on the controversy over steep hikes in user development fees (UDF) at India’s major airports comes at a moment when the country’s aviation story is being rewritten as one of growth, inclusion, and mass access. The question no longer is whether a fee is excessive; the real issue is a much larger one: who should pay for India’s infrastructure, and on what terms? At the heart of the matter lies a basic imbalance. UDFs are levied on a captive market—airline passengers who have no choice but to pay if they wish to travel. Unlike toll roads or utilities where alternatives may exist, the airport passenger has no substitute provider. This makes any sudden, sharp increase in charges inherently coercive, even if legally valid. The Supreme Court should recognise this unequal bargaining position and treat UDFs for what they truly are: a quasi-tax on mobility.
Should flyers pay more for better airports?
The honest answer is yes—but not alone. As India rapidly builds world-class aviation infrastructure, financing it almost entirely through the ticket-buying traveller is neither economically sound nor socially fair. Airports are capital-intensive by design. Terminals, runways, security systems, and airside facilities require large upfront investment and constant upgrades. If India wants globally competitive airports, it cannot pretend they come at bargain-basement prices. Some increase in UDF is defensible and even inevitable.
But what is of concern is that passengers in Delhi and Mumbai airports are reportedly facing a massive escalation in user fees—of as much as 22 times. The steep hike stems from a ruling by the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, which recalculated tariffs for FY09-14 and created a situation where the two airports are now deemed to have under-recovered more than Rs 50,000 crore during that period. The root of the dispute goes back to the 2006 privatisation of major airports. The point is that the general public should not be made to suffer due to prolonged legal disputes between airports and airlines. The court’s first task therefore should be to push regulators to adopt a glide-path approach—spreading recovery over longer periods rather than merely passing on costs to current passengers. Second, the court must examine whether passengers are being made residual payers—filling the gap after commercial revenues have been exhausted.
Indian airports
Going beyond the case, India’s airports are no longer just transit points; they are real estate and retail hubs. If non-aeronautical income from shopping, parking, advertising, and property is strong, the burden on passengers must reduce automatically. The court should direct that airport economics be assessed as a whole, not in silos that isolate passenger charges from commercial gains. Finally, the Supreme Court should articulate an essential truth: airports are not ordinary private assets. They are public utilities with immense societal spillovers. While private capital may build them, the public pays for them—directly or indirectly. In such a system, judicial oversight is not a constraint on investment but a guarantor of legitimacy. The court does not need to fix an exact fee. But it must fix the rules of the game. It must assert that airport finance cannot be opaque, arbitrary, or one-sided. A fair judgment will not merely decide a case; it will set a precedent for how India funds its infrastructure without sacrificing its citizens. In aviation, as in justice, the runway must be level.