new delhi airports in recent years had become malls with aerobridges but covid has dealt a body blow to shopping there the sharp decline in footfalls at airports and those flying preferring to remain masked up behind shields and not touching anything has meant sales of both food and beverage fb and retail has nosedived just how bad the impact is becomes clear from mumbai airport informing the airports economic regulatory authority aera about a large number of shops at chhatrapati shivaji maharaj international airport csmia shutting downvarious concessionaire had approached the company mumbai airport pvt ltd or mial for resetting of terms of contract due to severe adverse impact on passenger traffic and cargo tonnage due to covid19 out of 401 concessionaires 54 have already terminated contracts due to prevailing force majeure in case of retail and duty free out of 187 concessionaires 35 have terminated the contracts representing 75 of the revenue earned by mial from these concessions mumbai airport has told aerawhile the operator of indias second busiest airport says it has extended relief to concessionaires for fy21 since impact of covid19 may be for a long term it is expected that further demand from concessionaires for reliefs will be forthcomingspeaking about the impact on nonaero revenue streams like sales at duty free fb retail passenger services and flight kitchen mial says there is substantial reduction in number of passengers in both domestic and international segments impact much more severe in case of international passengers there is also a change in profile of passengers business and leisure travel is negligible which also affects sales per passengerthe mumbai airport earned a revenue of rs 1149 crore in fy 201920 from streams like fb retail duty free car parking and flight kitchen it projects that will fall 86 to rs 162 crore this fiscal fy21 the projections for fy22 fy23 and fy24 for revenue from this head is rs 493 crore rs 643 crore and rs 763 crore respectively as per the information given to aeraeven while flying majority of passengers prefer to remain masked up and the sale of fb onboard is not even close to prepandemic times a regular flyer told me she does not eat onboard during short or medium domestic flights because dar lagta hai in taking off the mask and shield to eat or drink said an airhostess of a low cost carrierthe situation is not too different at airports too as a result both the aero and nonaero revenue of airport has nosedivedmial has told aera that the covidinduced financial impact has led to a severe liquidity crisis and it is not able to meet its obligations towards operating expenditure and debt servicing apart from running csmia mial has to achieve financial closure for navi mumbai airport too it has sought aera nod to levy rs 200 and rs 500 on every domestic and international passenger respectively as ad hoc user development fee it has deferred capital expenditure of almost rs 3000 crore