Ryanair calls on European Commission to reduce regulatory burden
Tags :
UK,
Ryanair,
European Commission
Ryanair, called (14-Oct-08) on the European Commission to reduce the regulatory burden and costs on airlines and to embark upon anti-consumer scams such as fuel surcharges and screenscraper mis-selling in order to keep Europe’s air fares low during this recession.
Ryanair has written to the European Commission drawing its attention to the fact that oil prices have fallen by over 50% in recent months, yet many high fares airlines including British Airways, Lufthansa and Aer Lingus have failed to reduce their unjustified fuel surcharges at all.
Ryanair also called on the EU Commission to take action to protect Europe’s consumers from screenscrapers, many of whom are engaged in unauthorised breaches of copyright and unlawfully accessing websites such as Ryanair.com.
Ryanair also called on the EU Commission to urgently address and reverse many of the expensive, anti-consumer regulations introduced in recent years which have added significantly to the cost of all air travel within Europe, while delivering minimal passengers benefits. Such measures would include:
· Promoting a single EU air traffic management system which would reduce the current EUR7billion annual cost by as much as €5bn p.a., as well as reducing passenger delays, fuel consumption and emissions.
· Take away the EU261 passenger compensation legislation which is discriminatory in that they only apply to airlines, but not to competing ferries, trains or buses. This legislation should be replaced with legislation to outlaw over-booking of flights, which would be a cheap and effective way of ensuring that no passenger is denied access to a flight once booked.
· Take away the PRM regulation which was introduced last year and have allowed many monopoly airports to increase the handling costs of disabled passengers by up to 400%. At Dublin Airport for example Ryanair’s PRM costs which were less than 10c a passenger when the service was being provided by Ryanair, has now exploded to over 45c per passenger, because it is provided by an inefficient, over-charging profiteering airport monopoly.
· Take away the proposed airport charging directive which was formulated by the European Commission following its flawed decision in the Charleroi case. As the current sale discussions for Charleroi Airport indicate, not alone was the EU Commission’s analysis fundamentally wrong, but Charleroi Airport has been consistently profitable and is now the subject of a number of private sector offers for the airport due entirely to the success of Ryanair’s low cost base and rapid traffic growth at Charleroi.
· Take away the 7 State Aid investigations against Ryanair’s contracts at small regional airports including: Alghero, Pau, Frankfurt Hahn, among others, given that the current profitability and sale of Charleroi proves that there was no basis for the EU Commission’s erroneous finding of State Aid in the Charleroi case.
(c) Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Date posted: 15-Oct-08
For in-depth analysis of the low cost airline sector worldwide, subscribe now to the peerless Peanuts! Weekly
Other Ryanair News |
Ryanair calls on European Commission to reduce regulatory burden 
