THE TRANSPORT Ministry has agreed to open talks with the International Airline Carriers Association (IACA) to discuss the controversial hike in airport charges under new operator Hermes.
IACA wanted the government to intervene in their row with Hermes, because under the operator agreement, the state will receive 33 per cent of airport revenues.
The 11 mainly British and German charter airlines involved in the dispute with Hermes say the charges are too high. By November, fees per passenger will be over 32 euros, a 70 per cent increase since Hermes took over last year.
IACA members have been refusing to pay the latest increase, introduced in April, until the government agreed to talk. When they were forced to pay over a week ago under threat of losing ground handling services, they paid up.
However, they then warned that if the government did not respond to their request for negotiations, they would cut their programmes to Cyprus and file a legal complaint to the EU that airport services had not been opened to competition. This pushed the Transport Ministry to respond yesterday.
“The government has accepted to enter into discussions with the airlines and Hermes on the issue,” said IACA lawyer Michalis Kyriakides.
“This is a positive development and out intention is to start the process as soon as possible.”
Kyriakides said that for the airlines it would be an open-ended process.
IACA will ask that the ground handling services be opened to competition in line with EU regulations. The second of three demands is that airport charges directly reflect costs to the airport operator, and thirdly that some compromise be reached on the high fees already paid by the airlines.
“I think the government has shown itself to be positive and we hope to come away from this with a memorandum of understanding,” said Kyriakides. He said the airlines had been losing patience when the government failed to respond to their initial request in July to enter a dialogue.
He could not say when the talks, which will be held directly with the Transport Minister, would begin, as IACA officials would have to come to the island to participate.
If the Ministry had not responded and IACA members had made good their threat to cut capacity to Cyprus next year, the tourism sector could have lost as many as 200,000 visitors from its two main markets.
IACA members operate over 8,000 flights a year to Cyprus, carrying 1.5 million tourists to and from the island, and account for 30 per cent of total tourist traffic.
