Airport charges may need to rise by as much as 38 per cent because of new terminal facilities and rising debt levels at Dublin airport, the aviation regulator has indicated.
The current ceiling on airport charges at Dublin stands at €5.09 per passenger, but the regulator Bill Prasifka yesterday said this might need to rise to €7.05 per passenger. This was one of four scenarios he outlined at a briefing for journalists in Dublin.
Mr Prasifka said the new charging regime would depend on how much of the Dublin Airport Authority's capital expenditure (DAA) plan was allowed by his office. He said the DAA might also need a certain level of debt cover and this could also push up the level of charges.
The more conservative scenarios involve charges rising to between €5.94 and €6.57 per passenger, but Mr Prasifka said he would only take a decision after reviewing submissions from interested parties, including the airlines. The new charging regime will run from January 2006 to December 2010, although Mr Prasifka expects to announce a new regime by October 1st.
Mr Prasifka said he would look at operational expenditure at the airport, the DAA's commercial revenues, traffic growth forecasts and capacity studies before making a final decision. Several consultancy groups have submitted reports on these issues and they were released yesterday to media representatives.
One of these involved benchmarking Dublin airport against European peer airports. This work, carried out by the Air Transport Research Society, found that the DAA performed well in terms of passenger costs, but "underperformed the most efficient European airport by about 40 per cent" - believed to be Copenhagen.
Another report by UK consultants Booz Allen on the efficiency of the airport was broadly complimentary about efficiencies, although it stresses that more could be done.
It suggests that expenditure on fees, professional services, marketing, technology, stationery and other overheads be cut back.
It also suggests greater efficiencies should be achieved in the cleaning section of the company. It says the DAA should no longer carry out maintenance in areas of the airport it does not occupy. The report acknowledges that many costs at the DAA are inflexible or uncontrollable, such as security, fire staff and insurance.
Another report released by consultants Alan Stratford & Associates suggests that retailing at the airport has come under pressure in recent years.
"In the past three years the revenue from both duty free and tax paid shopping has been influenced by external competition from other airports and from the high street. The sales of certain product areas, example tobacco, photographic film and traditional products such as crystal have declined as a result of changes in customer demand, although gross margins have risen slightly," states the report.
It claims longer queues at the airport have reduced the time travellers have to shop. It notes that Dublin has proportionately less retail space per passenger than other international airports.
