| Stansted’s development infuriates airlines as charges fly high |
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Expansion of the Stansted airport seems to have flown with it a wave of controversy surrounding its funds, following the BAA’s increased charges levied onto the airport’s customers.
As the British Airports Authority (BAA) recorded 19% more profits of £637m, the Stansted Airport has simultaneously declared a whopping 300% hike in charges at the airport.
Airlines using Stansted, like easyJet and Ryanair, which carry about 80 % of the airport’s passengers, are outraged learning about the increased charges at the Stansted airport. Although they did not mind the airport’s restructuring program, the airlines stated that the present development plans had not been designed for them, but for big and luxurious jets that had not even started flying from Stansted as yet.
easyJet and Ryanair therefore, feel that it is absolutely unfair to charge their customers to raise funds for the posh and glitzy airport that is not going to be of any real use to them. They said in a joint report, “BAA has gone about this completely the wrong way. It has not yet consulted its airline customers on these incendiary plans and only a couple of weeks ago the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced it had fallen at the first hurdle and was going back to the drawing board on BAA's plans to spend over £100m on initial planning for expansion at Stansted.”
In order to fund the airport’s expansion process, BAA intends to levy increased charges of £8 from the current charge of £2.89, by the year 2008. Furthermore, charges of about £1 will be imposed on passengers at Heathrow and Gatwick too, for Stansted’s development program. British Airways, bmi and Virgin Atlantic have also expressed annoyance at the subsidising scheme of the BAA, since their customers will have to shell out extra money too due to charges posed at Heathrow and Gatwick airports.
easyJet and Ryanair airlines have planned to ask the CAA to take charge of the matter and compel BAA to backtrack its lofty expansion strategies and proceed with only those plans, which can be comfortably funded by its customers.
Chairman of the Stansted Airport Consultative Committee and easyJet's chief operating officer, Ed Winter, commented, “BAA has announced the Great Consumer Rip-Off and it should send a shiver down the spine of every airline passenger in the UK. It is planning to build a folly on the grandest scale that is unnecessary and unwanted. Before sensible low airport charges attracted the likes of easyJet to Stansted, it was little more than a white elephant in an Essex field with a single runway; BAA seems determined to make it a white elephant in an Essex field with two runways.”
Meanwhile, director of Operations at Ryanair, David O'Brien said, “The proposals by the BAA airport monopoly to blow £4bn on a second runway which even they confirm should cost only £200m is just the latest example of the goldplating rip-off of consumers practised by the BAA airport monopoly.”
Calling Stansted’s development plans as those of building another “Taj Mahal”, he added, “Ordinary passengers should not be forced to pay higher air fares just to finance another BAA Taj Mahal.”
Posted
on : Mon, 23 May 2005 07:55 GMT | General News
By : Salim Patel
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