K&K status summary:
According to the plan, in the first instance analyzes in the context of possible violation of competition rules are conducted.
These analyzes focus on the following cases:
The essential issue is the assessment, whether the pricing practices of airports as well as the conditions for provisioning handling services at airports constitute an abuse of the dominant position.
Therefore, the following areas are analyzed:
1. Whether the prices of airport charges can be considered as so-called excessive prices.
2. Whether the practices of handling services such as grouping of individual services in a way that the person using the airport is forced to purchase the entire service package can be determined as illegal bundling
3. Whether the observed increase in prices both in terms of airport and handling charges harm the connected markets, which in this case are the markets including activities that use General Aviation aircraft either for their core activities (e.g flight schools) or conducting other activities (e.g transporting the staff to a specific place). This is so-called margin squeeze
Each of these three practices is a form of abuse of the dominant position according to the art. 102 TFEU and is unacceptable in the EU law. At the same time, fighting against such activities is the obligation of the European Commission. Therefore, we would like to ask you to send information about the observed practices at European airports that you have come across and which from your perspective as users are particularly glaring and unfavorable.
Indicating possible infringements of competition law will be the primary way to draw the attention of the European Commission to the problems that General Aviation faces in practically the majority of European countries.
In addition, we are considering the preparation of a petition (to the European Parliament) indicating that apart from undertaking any possible activities related to the violation of competition, what is necessary are regulatory measures. We are analyzing various options, but in principle two areas of possible regulatory actions will be indicated (as from current perspective).
Firstly, the revision of the existing directives on airport charges and handling services, currently working as legal instruments created exclusively for commercial aviation (large airports and handlers). Lack of regulations in these legal acts of airport and handling practices for GA and smaller airports is one of the reasons of the current problems.
Secondly, raising the issue of handling services for GA in EASA’s work on handling requirements. The new basic regulation authorizes EASA to regulate the security requirements for handling services. Perhaps creating a detail folder of services including the GA specifics will enable to determine which of these services are mandatory. The current list of the categories of the handling services (handling directive) is typical for large airports and handlers. It misses GA perspective.
I am curious to how this turns out. I’m also curious to what have been done of less offensive maneuvers up front. Have there been any dialogue, meetings and so forth. Any correspondence showing non-cooperativeness from the other party(s)?
For Greece, yes, verbal talks in meetings, they can’t lower their prices, period, without further discussion.
We have recently been to LGZA with a PA46. Total invoice was about 280 Euro for 2 days with Goldair. Everything was fast but horribly inefficient. They needed 3 to 4 times as many people as everywhere else. We occupied:
1) Fraport supervisor getting airplane data for invoice later on
2) Goldair supervisor on apron
3) Follow me guy
4) Apron guy
5) Apron bus driver
6) Goldair central office (several people there)
7) Fueling supervisor
8) Fueling operator
9) Luggage truck driver and second person on truck for two bags
And some more people I forgot about.
Parking space use was inefficient as they did not eve consider pushing the plan back.
Everybody was very nice and I fear even though the final price is so high they are not making any money from it because they are so horribly inefficient. Finally on top the Greek VAT is very high (24% driving the price up further).
I think they have to reorganize the whole place completely. Then they could get more planes in and start making actual money even with lower charges.
Thanks for the report, Sebastian.
“Greece will always be Greece”, is the rather flippant explanation 
The more serious reason why this will never change is because over-staffing is the tacitly accepted Greek solution to social security, while in the “more prosperous north” the superfluous people will get chucked onto the dole (the unemployment or “disability” benefits circuit) where they tend to just rot, and in due course overload the national health service. In Greece, they keep fit by writing out Gendecs and walking to the coffee machine 
I have also virtually never found unfriendly people in Greece – at airports or elsewhere. I definitely could not say that for Europe generally That is one of the reasons I keep coming back… although along with most GA pilots I am going to do by best to avoid the fraport-screwed airports. It is sad to say that I have been fortunate to do so many Greek islands, and mainland airports, in the good old days.
As a matter of data point I can show the Norwegian taxes for Avinor (just about all public airports in Norway). Parking is free as long as you are a member of a flying club (AOPA or whatever, but I’m sure they gladly take the money from people who have no idea about this). The exception is ENGM where handling is compulsory, but I have no idea what the cost of handling is there, or what kind of service you get.
The taxes are all the same for all aircraft, essentially regardless, and they are calculated as take off charges. The basic formula is NOK 62 per ton (about €6.2 ) and decreases above 75 ton MTOW, but there are additional charges also as shown below (divide by 10 to get Euro):
These are charges per ton. Then passenger tax (NOK 48 per passenger) and transfer to abroad tax (NOK 34 per passenger) and security tax (NOK 64)
But, for smaller GA aircraft, less than 8 ton, they have simplified all this and lumped it into a set sum depending on MTOW of the aircraft. The next table shows weekly card, cost as function of MTOW. Individual take off charge, and yearly card, cost as function of MTOW (How they calculated the prices for weekly and yearly cards is a mystery).
Say you have an aircraft with MTOW 1400 kg. Individual take off will be NOK 199, weekly card will be NOK 688 and yearly card will be NOK 9905.
Funny thing. If your aircraft tips above MTOW 2000 kg, then the take off charge drops to NOK 71 (€ 7). But then I guess enroute charges also apply, I don’t know what they are. But flying VFR in an aircraft with MTOW just above 2000kg is definitely the cheapest Also, homebuilt and vintage aircraft between 1100 – 5700 kg are considerably cheaper than similar weight normal category aircraft regarding for yearly charge (about 1/4 for the largest). All the details (in English) can be found here.
But, we have expensive beer and I really don’t consider these charges cheap. It’s just that compared with Greece they are.
This popped up on the last IAOPA newsletter and probably explains why they were not supportive of this initiative…
- Fees and charges at European airports. Fees and charges at many airports in various European countries are prohibitively high for GA. Action is required primarily on national level and to get involved in the user consultations, but IAOPA-Europe is also evaluating the legal situation, if there are cases of monopolistic abuse.
We’ve been talking about Ibiza (LEIB) as one of the abusers, but that seems to have changed.
Meridian, 3 POB, IFR arrival, 1 overnight : handling € 130, landing & parking: €58,75. So total (incl VAT): € 188,75.
No more security fees and service fees over handling fees and what have you.. Up until recently this would have a bill of some € 650 or so.
For lighter aircraft only, I’m not sure where the exact limit is. Check with one of the handlers there.
Funny how we probably now all think this is cheap
@Bart, maybe your hard work is starting to pay off!
Great news Aart. Something positive from Ibiza, earlier some good news from Petakas regarding Greece and Fraport. Let’s hope this action has put in its tuppence here and there.
GA without access to airports has no sense and keeps shrinking with all the consequences. Maybe this message starts breaking through, maybe local pressures of organizations like AOPA’s or maybe the threat of legal proceedings out of our action indeed have played some role. Hard to say, the good is we see some positive notion, that’s really great in the doom of past news…
In Poland no progress with abusing airports (like EPWR), so as I declared here https://www.euroga.org/forums/legal-action-against-pricing-of-airports-handlers-need-your-input-and-cost-examples/9765?page=5
– soon there will be the complaint to Polish antimonopoly body. And the plan is to provide a translation onto English so that this could be used (at least in large parts) and repeated where needed, to make our message more audible…
