After a year of continuous pressure from IATA over airport charges, the Airports Council International (ACI) has made its most forthright rebuttal yet of airline claims over the issue. It also demands that IATA" call off the disinformation campaign" it has been pursuing. IATA has been challenging airport charges on a global basis, and in specific campaigns over fee levels at airports such as Tokyo Narita and Toronto Pearson.

During the December ACI World Assembly at Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, airport executives repeated a plea from the association's director general Robert Aaronson made at the June 2003 IATA annual meeting for a new relationship between the two parties. "It is simplistic for IATA to single out airport user charges as a scapegoat for failed airline business models," said Aaronson.

In a statement, ACI said: "Airports should not subordinate the interests of their communities to strategies of failing airlines that would undermine such interests." As major economic drivers for their regions, airports believe they have a wider obligation than simply serving airlines. David Pang, chief executive of Hong Kong airport, says that he sees his job as a "flow manager", providing an airport that is efficient and easily accessible. "My customers are the passengers as well as the airlines," he said.

As airports "strongly resist pressures to continue to subsidise failing airlines, instead insisting that airlines pay their own way", said ACI, they are also defending themselves against accusations that they behave like monopolies. Niels Boserup, the newly elected chairman of ACI and chief executive of Denmark's Copenhagen Airport, acknowledges that in the past the attitude of airports towards airlines was influenced by their monopoly status. The situation is now different, he argues: "The attitude is changing. Airports are simply not monopolies anymore, they are competing and I welcome that."

According to Aaronson: "Most business issues between airlines and airports need to be addressed by the parties on an airport-by-airport basis." He also believes that IATA's calls for more regulations would be "completely counter-productive to the interests of the entire air transport industry including airlines".

MARK PILLING SHARJAH

Source: Airline Business