I think perhaps Articles 101 and 102 of the TFEU – our de facto Constitution which all good citizens should know by heart.
I have no idea whether @Bart has a case, but the usual procedure is to report a suspected breach of the Treaties to the European Commission – in this instance probably Directorate F of DG Competition. This process is genuinely “free”, in the sense that the Commission’s lawyers uphold the Treaties with expertise and enthusiasm, and their work generates fines which more than cover their salaries.
Homework starts here, and the complaint procedure is outlined on page 281 of Volume 1.
For those of us with a somewhat limited attention span, there’s a very brief summary here.
Besides the above, there is also Directive 96/67/EC providing for the right to self-handling. However, using this right in practice may require all of us to fulfil some basic requirements, such as to get airport-specific briefing, wear high-visibility clothing on the apron, have appropriate identification documents, etc., and this is where we may need to resort to some umbrella organisation such as AOPA (at least for the issuance of commonly recognised identification documents).
By the way, given that only a few European countries have active AOPA chapters, it may be a good idea to approach IAOPA with a proposal to establish another EU-wide Internet-centric chapter explicitly aimed at gathering a sufficiently large body of GA users to conduct effective advocacy.
A short summary for those who does not have time/ willingness to go through the whole thread…
As GA we have a problem with discriminatory pricing at growing number of airports in Europe, time to start fighting that.
There is a survey with which we try to assess the problem and pinpoint the abusing airports, there is plan of legal action, against chosen airports?, against some system failure? I do not know yet, but hope to learn soon. The potential legal action will be funded by the crowdfunding process.
Through the survey and discussions within this thread we are preparing insights for the legal advisors, I am in touch with two of such. In the course of next week I should have their initial proposals of how to approach our problem and how much it will cost to represent us.
Once having the proposals – I will share it immediately. After that – discussion here and decision about next steps.
Survey available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R8NBNSV
It took me a while to collect the responses from the airports, but here it is, some really interesting table…
I put together EPWR and it’s peers (similar no of operations) but also three other airports of Poland, from the lower end in terms of no of operations yearly. Correct me if I am wrong, but these would be my conclusions of that example:
- If the airport does not manage to attract a certain no of traffic – it’s prices for GA are OK, nothing ridiculous in this group, despite handling etc. They want GA, probably we work well in their statistics – have a look at the right side of the table
- Once they have more airline traffic (left side, orange) – the pricing strategy changes, they double/ triple the prices comparing with the right side
- Even for the orange group we are far from any congestion issues, no of operations per hour is pretty modest, so capacity is not a factor here. They decide they do not need GA anymore so they increase the prices, period.
Would be great to have some similar summaries from other countries, in which we are complaining about price ban for GA. Any volunteers, maybe…?
And here it goes, update of survey results
Bart wrote:
- Even for the orange group we are far from any congestion issues, no of operations per hour is pretty modest, so capacity is not a factor here. They decide they do not need GA anymore so they increase the prices, period.
Bart, a few questions on your analysis. It is very helpful but you do need to be careful to make the right conclusions.
Is assuming equally distributed ops during 24 periods realistic? Indeed the fact the three on the left are open 24h must have significant cost implications.
Are you at risk of mixing cause and effect? Perhaps the airports CAT goes to are larger and more expensive to run hence the higher prices? The price may have nothing to do with squeezing out GA.
JaconC, I agree with you, for sure there are peaks and equal distribution is some simplification here. But well, does it really matter? The all six are pretty similar in terms of size of the infrastructure, one runway, one ILS, typical regional airports. None of them is even close to be called “busy airport”. Part is attractive for CAT traffic, part not.
Looking at the survey results I made an assumption that high landing/handling fees might be a result the process, that once CAT level is high enough the airports/handlers (for whatever reasons) start pricing GA with discriminatory rates.
On the example of Poland this hypothesis looks like being true. It would be great to have it verified also from other places, like the tops of the survey list – Greece, UK, Spain, Italy…
I think the results will be similar. That in general we will see some reasonable prices with limited cheap lines traffic and GA price exclusion once the airport serves more airline clients.
Without any regulation of that area it looks like a pretty obvious strategy. Instead of improving capacity management, maybe investing extra into some infrastructure – let’s get rid of these now less needed GA clients. With CAT traffic we have enough serving just these fat ones…
One remark after a while of thinking – the comparison of “with enough CAT traffic/ without” won’t work for Greece. In Greece we have the situation almost totally controlled by Fraport, thus won’t see any market tendencies under such umbrella. Fraport in Greece is some super league for the rest of Europe…
I would like to share some good news regarding the next step following the survey – we shall be able to enter the legal action EU and national level against abusing airports!
It took bit more than initially expected, but today I got confirmation from one of the legal teams I was talking to that they will take a challenge. This will be the CHALLANGE in fact, it looks that airports under current legal regimes are well poised for doing with prices whatever they wish…
Initially I was talking with two legal companies, but unfortunately one of them, after some closer look – sadly, but gave up…
Fortunately the other option worked out, we have some real EU law/ aviation law experts there, I am more than happy the process will continue.
More details tomorrow, I need to clarify a few details regarding the disclosures through the forum, but the process starts flying 
Well done, thanks!
