Ireland's Dublin Airport (DUB/EIDW) will have to cut passenger charges by €3.1 million this year as country's Civil Aviation regulator penalise it for last summer’s delays.
About 1,400 travellers missed flights from Dublin at the end of May when a security staff shortage led to long queues, while delays continued through subsequent months as travel rebounded from two years of Government curbs.
The Commission for Aviation Regulation (CAR) said on Tuesday,
In the 2021 Decision on an Interim Review of the 2019 Determination in relation to 2022 (CP3/2021) we amended the 2022 per passenger price cap decision so that no adjustments would be made in future years in relation to 2022. This meant that no clawback of remuneration of unspent Capital Expenditure (Capex) allowances would occur, nor would adjustments be made in relation to the Operating Expenditure (Opex) passthrough or Commercial Revenues rolling schemes mechanism.
The CAR said to have made the decision to partially reintroduce quality of service (QoS) revenue adjustments, with the maximum potential rebate set to €0.11 per passenger. That is, the price cap could be reduced by up to €0.11 if Dublin Airport did not meet the prescribed service quality standards. The real price cap for 2022 was provisionally €7.75 per passenger in February 2019 prices, which translated to a nominal price cap of €8.11.
CAR believes, Dublin Airport did not meet the QoS standards in relation to security queue times on numerous days in 2022. For quarter 1 of 2022, the Commission accepted the existence of extenuating circumstances relating to the effects of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 on the sickness absence rate in the Airport Search Unit.
The CAR also said that it would impose an effective €3.1 million penalty on State airports company, DAA, for its failure to meet quality of service standards last summer.
However, the number of days on which the standards were not met in quarters 2 and 3 of 2022, without extenuating circumstances, was still sufficient to generate the maximum rebate possible in relation to 2022. Thus, the price cap for 2022 is reduced by €0.11. Given passenger numbers for the year of 28.1m, this translates to a revenue reduction of approximately €3.1m. The final price cap for 2022 is therefore €8.00.
DAA will have to cut the passenger charges it levies on airlines by a total of €3.1 million through this year, rather than hand over the cash to the regulator, which will be a consequence of the decision.
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