New Airline Committee to Ensure Efficient Development of Dublin Airport

This Committee has now been joined by several other airlines and handlers operating at Dublin Airport.
 
Mr Geoffrey O’Byrne White, Chairman, said that the Committee was concerned that the current airline regulatory regime was fundamentally flawed and did not allow for the full and proper consideration, by the Dublin Airport Authority, of the reasonable requirements of users, but instead fostered the development of inefficient and excessively expensive facilities.  This is due to the fact that the DAA receives a rate of return on its capital expenditure and therefore the higher the expense, the higher the return.
 
The DACC invited the DAA and the Commission for Aviation Regulation (CAR) to attend an initial meeting in Dublin, on 02-May-08, to outline their reasonable requirements and to ensure that these are reflected in the airport’s capital expenditure (Capex) proposals. The DAA stated that it could not attend the meeting due to unspecified “diary commitments” and the Committee postponed this part of the meeting until 07-May-08. However, the CAR attended the meeting and the Committee expressed its concerns over its “light touch” approach to regulating the DAA monopoly. The Committee called on the CAR to exclude all expenditure by the DAA that does not reflect their reasonable requirements and also called for competition to be introduced at Dublin Airport in order to force the DAA to provide better services and lower its charges to passengers.

© Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Date posted: 05-May-08