Unfair Competition - BA/KLM Subsidising Easy Landing Fees
I have it on good authority from a senior management source at Newcastle that not only are Easy not paying any landing fees, they also have a penalty clause which means that if their aircraft are more than 20 minutes late on turn around, the airport pays a financial penalty to Easy.
I'm pretty sure that BA, KLM etc pay the full landing fee. Now wonder Easy and Ryan can undercut the big carrieres if they are being offered preferrential deals at regional airports. Who are the grounstaff likely to prioritise with that type of penalty clause??
The lack of apparent competitiveness of BA's regional service which was mainly due to inappropariate accounting has led to the withdrawl of many of BA's regional services. Perhaps one of the BA or KLM staff could get the BA/KLM managers to take this up with the CEO at Newcastle and at least try and get a level playing field, before any more services collapse.
The Airports Act requires that all operators be treated on equal terms, and it would appear that Newcastle is therefore operating in breach of its licence if this is true.
Why am I interested, I want a proper scheduled service for Newcastle with approprite worldwide connections, not a cheap and cheerful charabang to Prague, and I don't see why I should subsidise their operations with ever escalating BA domestic fares.