news

LOW-COST COMPANIES AND AIRPORT COSTS

London (UK)

The World Low Cost Airlines Congress took place last September 11-14 in London. Low-cost companies launched harsh attacks to European and non-European airports for being guilty of too expensive air fares and few new services. “Airports should reduce costs and offer a better social and collective experience. At the moment the experience is the worst” – stated the EasyJet Chief executive Andrew Harrison. The Chief executive of Centralwings Maciej Kwiatkowski stressed the concept bringing forward concrete cases, e.g. Warsaw and Stansted.

Harrison claimed that the time is ripe to break up airports monopoly. For example, Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted in London are owned by the BAA and this would threat competitiveness among the airports. “Close airports should be owned by different bodies”. Stansted – where 40% of traffic is represented by low-cost companies – had been allotted 2,5 billion pounds for development and expansion projects judged “unnecessary and unrequested”. Meanwhile Berlin allotted 2 billion euros to create a new airport opening in 2011. “Such plans demand huge investments and they threat low-cost companies”, whose fear is to face these costs, stated Harrison. EasyJet also notified that groundhandling in airports represents the highest costs for the whole company, i.e. about 30% of operative costs, thus over the next ten years the aim is to reduce such burden as much as possible.

It is not surprising that airports have a different point of view. The marketing Director of the Berlin Airports Group Burkhard Kieker assured the companies that there will be no further requests. He also claimed that the project of a new Berlin airport started up in early 90s, i.e. before the boom of low-cost companies. He stressed that companies and airports should learn to negotiate in order to cooperate in the best possible way. However, according to the vice-president of the operations of Vinci Airports Chris Orphanou mutual trust seems to be failing.

Back to list »