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http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030210/airlines_charges_1.html

 

IATA protests over charge hike at Zurich airport

Monday February 10, 1:44 pm ET

By Robert Evans

 

 

GENEVA, Feb 10 (Reuters) - The global airlines body IATA on Monday hit out at what it called a "ludicrous" 47 percent hike in passenger service charges to go into force later this year at Zurich's Kloten International Airport.

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IATA spokesman William Gaillard said the charge, 36 Swiss francs ($26.50) for every departing passenger, was likely to drive travellers and short-haul traffic away from financially-troubled Kloten to alternative airports.

 

"At a time when the world's airlines are suffering record losses, introducing this charge is counterproductive and ludicrous," Gaillard quoted IATA Director-General Giovanni Bisignani as saying.

 

"It will hit both the airlines and the passengers in their pockets."

 

Last month, Bisignani said the global industry suffered a $US13 billion loss last year after losing $18 billion in 2001.

 

A spokesman for the British-based budget airline easyJet (London:EZJ.L - News), which runs six flights a day between London airports and Zurich, hinted that it might switch them elsewhere over the charges.

 

EasyJet has a Swiss offshoot based in Geneva, where no changes to passenger service charges are planned, and operates flights from there to destinations across western Europe.

 

The IATA spokesman told Reuters that the new service charge, to be added to the price of a ticket and intended to finance infrastructure at Kloten, would be double that of the highest in any other European airport.

 

Service charges are separate from airport taxes which are decreed by governments to boost overall state revenues.

 

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At Kloten, now known as Unique Zurich Airport, an official confirmed that the charges -- partly aimed at financing a new state-of-the-art terminal docking area to open in the autumn -- would be levied from September 1.

 

Airport spokesman Joern Wagenbach said the extra funds would also go towards improved noise control and extra security measures of the type being introduced around the world since the September 11, 2001 hijackings in the United States.

 

The increase has been judged fair by the Swiss government's Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA), but FOCA refused to agree to them being introduced from March, as the airport had wanted.

 

Kloten says running the new terminal will cost between 1-2 million Swiss francs ($735.294 to $1.47 million) a month, while the new charges will bring in five million Swiss francs ($3.68 million) a month.

 

Gaillard said the Geneva-based IATA, which groups some 280 international airlines around the world, had lobbied hard against the charges with Swiss aviation authorities and Kloten. "But we have run up against a brick wall," he added.

 

Switzerland's struggling flag carrier Swiss International Airlines (Zurich:SWIn.S - News), which has just announced fleet and job cuts, was likely to be badly hit, and budget airlines operating on small margins could be driven away altogether, Gaillard said.

 

There was no immediate comment from Swiss, but easyJet spokesman Toby Nicol said the new charges were "outrageous."

 

Nicol said easyJet had also protested the decision which airlines generally saw as aimed at pushing the cost of the new Zurich terminal, planned before the recent downturn in the air travel industry, onto the carriers.

 

"Airports have to learn that airlines have always got the ultimate sanction -- we can withdraw our flights and go elsewhere," he told Reuters by telephone from London.