Bart,are you interested in older Italian,Spanish and other Mediterranean invoices (2008-2015) depicting realy cheapo charges in comparison of recent situation ?
Bart,
I obtained quotes from Granada airport (LEGR) for a Cirrus SR22. Granada now mandatory handling when arriving from any airport that is not AENA operated which essentially means any airport outside Spain, even Schengen. The quotes from the 3 handlers that deal with light aircraft were all suspiciously close (Iberia EUR71, Air Taxis EUR72, Andalucia EUR73). The market is clearly failing. I will email you the quotes I received.
Geoff
Geoff wrote:
Granada now mandatory handling when arriving from any airport that is not AENA operated which essentially means any airport outside Spain, even Schengen.
I’ll try to find old LEGR invoice for comparison.
I paid about €10 at LEGR, in 2008, FWIW. Admittedly that was ridiculously low and the airport had about a dozen decrepit GA planes parked there, apparently permanently, with grass growing around the wheels despite them being parked on concrete, as a demonstration of the near-collapse of certified GA in Spain which seems to have taken place around then (the EU funded construction boom coming to an end, perhaps). So it seems to have gone from one extreme to the other.
It is interesting to note that the new Basic Regulation published on 22 August 2018 (see https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32018R1139&from=EN) makes various references to groundhandling services and their regulation.
At the same time Article 1 (subject matter and objectives) makes the following statements:
2. This Regulation further aims to:
[…]
(b) facilitate, in the fields covered by this Regulation, the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital,
providing a level playing field for all actors in the internal aviation market, and improve the competitiveness of the
Union’s aviation industry;
[…]
(e) promote cost-efficiency, by, inter alia, avoiding duplication, and promoting effectiveness in regulatory, certification
and oversight processes as well as an efficient use of related resources at Union and national level;
I wonder whether there is therefore a case to make that EASA has the power to regulate groundhandling services, in particular with respect to level-playing field and cost-efficiency. Would this be a topic for the EASA annual safety conference in Vienna which is supposed to focus on GA (https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/EASA%20Safety%20Conference%20Agenda%20v030818.pdf)?
Geoff wrote:
Granada now mandatory handling when arriving from any airport that is not AENA operated which essentially means any airport outside Spain, even Schengen.
Wow! I’ve flown to LEGR umpteen times and paid around EUR 11. Alas, I don’t have the invoices anymore.
Bart, have you already seen the UK regional airport league table for Cessna 152 (or 757kg MTOW) aircraft?
It has been posted elsewhere on this forum.
Hi Bart, just sent you an email with invoices for visit to Ibiza LEIB this year and last. For the same aircraft (1.96 tonnes), the total cost for airport charges and handling (ie NOT fuel), rose from Euro 262 to Euro 624. The handling component was about Euro 160 of that.
Hope this helps. Also, I hope others are helping Bart with what he needs! he is doing us a huge favour.
Paul Beckwith
Hello All,
I just got the first batch of material contracted with K&K (legal framework analysis airports/handlers vs. GA) and it looks very well. Some 50 pages document, leading clearly to conclusion that we have market failure in this area and that further EC investigation is more than in need here. In translation now.
There are some delays with the next important part (the request to the European Commission), but seeing the first part I am sure already the money gathered and spent on K&K are the well invested ones.
Regarding the invoices documenting the changes in prices – if there are any extra forum members that could send me such – please do. For now we have examples of past and new prices from Spain, Greece, Sweden, Poland and Lativia. Legal team says “could be better, but enough to ask for formal investigation”…
But if someone would like to point a particular airport in his country for a first line of potential price abuse probing – this is the last call for that…
MedFlyer wrote:
Bart,are you interested in older Italian,Spanish and other Mediterranean invoices (2008-2015) depicting realy cheapo charges in comparison of recent situation ?
Bart, with respect to Spanish airports this link might be helpful to K&K. http://www.aopa-spain.org/index.php/es/defensa-de-la-ag/handling
It references a circular from AENA (the Spanish airport operator) stating that at each Spanish airport there is a designated handling agent that is bound by law to offer all aircraft a minimum level of service and that the maximum that can be charged is EUR 9+VAT (unless you want additional services). Other handling agents are free to charge what they want. I queried this with AOPA Spain and they confirmed this was correct, EUR9+VAT was the max permitted for minimum handling. And yet when I point this out to Iberia (the designated agent at Granada) they insist they can charge me EUR9 + VAT plus EUR50+VAT for I quote “being with me the whole time” whatever that means.
