THE Transport Ministry yesterday called on the two sides in the airport fees dispute to be less public about the row and try to resolve it during a meeting scheduled for the end of this month.
Members of the International Airline Carriers Association (IACA) entered a new spat with airport operator Hermes, which has again threatened to cut their ground handling services this week for failure to pay the latest increase in charges.
It appeared as if the issue was on the road to being resolved after a similar run-in last month, where the airlines ultimately paid but asked for a dialogue with the government and Hermes, a request that was eventually granted.
However, new letters went out at the weekend to the mainly British and German charter carriers, warning them of service cuts on Thursday, if they didn’t pay up by then. The IACA members were surprised by the Hermes move given that a dialogue was on the cards.
Makis Constantinides, the Permanent Secretary of the Transport Ministry, yesterday called on the two sides in the dispute to tone down the rhetoric.
He said it was a sensitive time of the year for a public spat concerning the airport, given that it was the height of the tourist season and could prove detrimental for the economy.
“This is a financial difference between the strategic investor and some of its customers,” said Constantinides, suggesting it should take place out of the public eye.
Referring to the IACA stance that Hermes ground handling services constituted a monopoly, Constantindes said if anyone felt a monopoly existed there was a process to deal with such issues.
The airlines have threatened to file a legal complaint to the EU that airport services had not been opened to competition.
Constantinides urged the two parties to attend the meeting arranged for August 27 at the Ministry to try and resolve the dispute.
“We also call on both sides to refrain from any extreme measures in the meantime,” he said.
IACA says Hermes charges are too high and do not reflect the level of services being offered at Larnaca. By November, fees per passengers will be over 32 euros, a 70 per cent increase since Hermes took over last year.
They want airport charges directly to reflect costs to the airport operator, and a compromise on the high fees already paid by the airlines.
The government, which receives 33 per cent of the airport revenues, agreed towards the end of last month to talk with IACA after the association threatened to cut their tourist programmes to Cyprus, losing the tourism sector as many as 200,000 visitors from its two main markets, Britain and Germany.
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.
But Panicos Papadakis a spokesman for Hermes told CyBC yesterday: “When we undertook the operation of the airport on May 10, 2006 it was known that new charges would be imposed.”
He said the issue was even discussed in Parliament and that everyone knew there would be new charges from April 1 this year.
Papadakis said that the scores of airlines that use the island’s airports had paid the extra charges after passing them on to passengers. The IACA airlines were complaining because they said they didn’t have enough warning so they could do the same themselves, he said.
