Price Hike Cometh
 

ACCC does not object to price increases by Airservices Australia

22 June 2015
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has decided to not object to a proposal by Airservices Australia to increase prices for some of its monopoly services, from 1 July 2015. Airservices Australia provides air traffic control and aviation fire-fighting and rescue services to airports and airlines.

The ACCC assesses notifications of proposed price increases by Airservices Australia. The proposal will put into effect pricing for the final year of Airservices Australia’s long-term pricing plan, which was approved by the ACCC in 2011.

In summary:

Terminal navigation (TN) charges will increase at 19 airports by between 0.2 per cent and 3.5 per cent, and will fall at six airports by between 1.0 and 5.0 per cent.
Charges for aviation rescue and fire-fighting (ARFF) services will increase at 26 airports by between 1.0 per cent and 10.1 per cent, and will fall at two airports by 1.6 per cent and 9.9 per cent. These price changes reflect the need to gradually transition ARFF services towards full cost recovery.
Charges for en route navigation services will remain unchanged.
Out-of-hours charges for TN and ARFF services will also increase by between 2.7 and 3.4 per cent for various categories of services.
“Since the ACCC approved the long-term pricing proposal in 2011, Airservices has improved its consultation with industry. However, the ACCC would encourage Airservices to afford industry with more opportunities to provide input into its investment decision making processes and to progress its work on refining its key performance indicators to support an effective reward/penalty system,” ACCC Commissioner Cristina Cifuentes said.

“These aspects will be looked at in more details as part of the ACCC’s consideration of the next long-term pricing proposal later this year.”

The ACCC consulted on the current proposed price increases with Airservices’ stakeholders, including airlines and aviation representative bodies.

Airservices intends to implement its proposed prices on 1 July 2015.

The ACCC’s decision is available at: Airservices Australia 2015

ACCC does not object to price increases by Airservices Australia | ACCC

Price Hike Cometh
 

Why do airports such as Camden and Albury require ATS? Do the local operators support the continued operation of the Towers, or are these "services" simply imposed upon them? Given the 19% increase in charges, maybe it's time to tell Airservices their services are no longer required.

ATS services are mandated by CASA once movements (or pax numbers, I can't remember off the top of my head) exceed a certain amount annually.

morno

Tamworth has 7-8 RPT movements daily.

Dubbo has 10-12 RPT movements daily.

Why does Tamworth have a Tower?

I think you will find the requirement for a tower is based on passenger numbers.

Also Tamworth also as the BAE/ADF school which must likely a factor in keeping the tower open.

The trigger for ARFF is 350,000 pax movements. I'm guessing that same figure is used for implementation of TWR services.

Why isn't there a tower at Balina then?

Why is there a tower at Albury and not Wagga?

Would RPT pilots prefer to operate into Wagga with no tower but good facilities (ILS etc) or into Albury with a tower and less traffic?

Hey Porter,

From where you come from (the land of the free), every RPT port has a tower. You should know :ok:

Someone mentioned Dubbo….you would not want to go there :}

Camden has zero RPT pax movements and just a few more GA movements. Cannot understand why ATS are required at all midweek.