Christmas Chaos LGW
ExXB,
I think you are legally correct but, as the volume of PRM traffic is low the airports are not properly focused on their obligations. By delegating responsibility to service providers they have moved this into a purely financial matter as PaxBoy notes.
The service providers get paid for every task, a cost met by the airport which is funded by general passenger charges levied from airlines. It is therefore not in the airport or airlines' interest to see improved service level and thus higher cost . To counter this allegation, I expect most airports impose a fine on the service providers where they fail to achieve defined service quality levels. This effectively passes the buck onto the service provider , OCS or whoever, to demonstrate that the airport has discharged its legal obligation. However, the service providers will accept those fines as a cost measured under commercial cost/ benefit criteria. Accordingly, at peak times or out of hours there will probably never be enough capacity to meet PRM needs.
The misinterpretation of the "rules" will continue to serve airport and airline well until EU decide to revisit this- however, there is much else that they also need to do.
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