ACI EUROPE regrets Irish Aviation Authority decision on airport charges

ACI EUROPE regrets the Irish Aviation Authority’s (IAA) Draft Decision on Dublin Airport’s annual airport charges. The IAA supported a complaint by Ryanair against charge differentiations at Dublin Airport, forcing the airport to remove or overhaul the proposal. The charges differentiations aimed to ensure that larger aircraft don’t pay a disproportionately high charge, applied a discount for transfer passengers, a discount for low emissions aircraft, and a rebate based on NOx emissions from engines.

ACI EUROPE argues that the IAA’s decision is unfounded. For example, every other hub airport offers discounts for transfer passengers. The IAA establishes requirements for cost assessments for all the differentiations which are by definition impossible to provide for a differentiation from a pure cost-related charge. The effect is to force the airport to price to the interests of one airline, and not a pricing regime that works for all 55 airlines operating from the airport.

A consequence of the IAA’s decision is that it weakens Dublin Airport’s ability to progress on its climate action plans, as the decision hinders Dublin Airport’s ability to have the commercial discretion on how to adapt its pricing structure to reward airlines based on aircraft environmental performance.

Rather, ACI EUROPE advocates for the IAA to ensure compliance with the overall 5-year pricing decision, and enable the airport to work in coordination with airlines on sustainably raising the passenger cap at Dublin Airport to meet growing demand.

Find out more in our Press Release here.