IATA won’t hesitate to take legal action against airports if that is necessary to prevent them from drastically increasing charges from 2022 through the coming years. Despite some reduction of the initially announced higher charges, the airline association says now is not the time to pass on the airport’s losses to airlines that are trying to recover from the Covid-crisis, Director-General Willie Walsh said on November 3 in a media briefing. IATA not ruling out legal action against airport charges. Last month during IATA’s Annual General Meeting in Boston, Walsh already was most vocal about the proposed extra charges from airports and air navigation service providers. He was especially critical of the proposal of London Heathrow to increase charges by ninety percent to recoup losses incurred during the past eighteen months. “This goes off the chart. (…) Do they honestly expect us to believe that a 90 percent increase in charges is going to help the airline industry?” Walsh said. The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) stepped in on October 19. In a proposal submitted for consultation, the CAA suggested that Heathrow increases tariffs by only 11 and 56 percent in the next five years. IATA and airlines are still critical about this increase while Heathrow isn’t happy either because it wants more. Similarly, IATA continues to oppose the increase of 37 percent at Amsterdam Schiphol, which the airport reduced from the planned 42 percent increase after complaints from KLM and other airlines. Walsh would be having a discussion with the CAA later today to discuss the situation Heathrow, but on a question from AirInsight he said: “Where we can, we will certainly take action in consultation with our local members. It is important in a time like this that we use every means available to us to resist the efforts by airports to increase their charges.” “Heathrow continues to be determined to see the wrap adjusted to reflect their lost revenues in 2020 and 2021. The idea that they should have a £2.5 billion adjustment because of lost revenues has to be resisted. Although the CAA has very generously in my opinion allowed them a £300 million adjustment, we have to oppose these developments in any way. So we will use all of the available avenues to resist this. If legal action is available, certainly that is something that we will consider and we won’t hesitate to take it if we believe it is in the interest of our members.” IATA presented September traffic and cargo figures today, showing that demand measured in Revenue Passenger Kilometers (RPKs) was at 53.4 percent of September 2019 levels, up from -56 percent in August. International demand remains low at -69.2 percent compared to two years ago. Traffic in/to North and Central America is the closest to pre-Covid levels or at -30.5 and 39.4 percent respectively. At the other spectrum is Asia at -69 percent. Domestic travel continued to be showing the strongest recovery, with demand on average at -24.3 percent of September 2019 levels. Although the rate of recovery slightly dropped, Russia remains the market with the strongest recovery since January and performed 29.3 percent better than in 2019. The US is next at -12.8 percent, Brazil at -17.3 percent, China at -26.2 percent, India at -41.3 percent, Japan at -65.5 percent, and Australia at -80.3 percent. Cargo demand in cargo tons kilometers was up by 9.1 percent in September, or 9.4 percent internationally. The biggest growth in volumes was in Africa at 34.6 percent, followed by North America at 19.3 percent. Capacity remains at -8.9 percent of 2019 levels.
