Move to recover airport costs

Press, 6 November 1986, Page 6

Move to recover airport costs

Wellington reporter

the Civil Aviation Charges Regulations.

Taxpayer subsidies on landing charges at airports will be reduced, according to the Minister of Civil Aviation, Mr Prebble. In a move towards the full recovery of costs, landing charges on international flights will double while domestic charges for large aircraft will increase about 18 per cent.

The amendments would include a charge that would go towards paying the regulatory costs of the Civil Aviation Division of the Ministry of Transport.

Aviation facilities had been under-priced for many years now, Mr Prebble said.

Some airports and the airways system did not break even, let alone provide a return on the considerable taxpayer investment these represented:

He said the increases would come into effect early in the New Year through amendments to

This meant that in effect the taxpayers had

been subsidising the airlines and other airport users.

charges at all. These changes would enable realistic charges to be set for private and corporate aircraft, and would reduce the amount of free-parking time aircraft were allowed at airports, Mr Prebble said. The increases in landing charges .were expected to raise'an extra $2B million over a full year, but even that would not represent full cost recovery.

The increased charges would go some way towards reducing those subsidies, but were only part of a package of measures for recovering the cost Of aviation, he said. The Government planned to recover costs from all aviation users and not those charged at present. Users such as corporate aircraft, Government department aircraft, and general aviation did not in many cases pay landing

way New Zealand airports were run, he said. The Opposition spokesman bn transport, Mr Winston Peters (Nat., Tauranga), accused Mr Prebble of using “backdoor methods” to cut the taxpayer subsidy on landing charges. Legislation was pending that would allow airport authorities the right to charge for airport services if they chose. However, the airport

Full cost recovery authorities were giving would not be - sought im-_ him short shrift, and so he mediately, because there; was trying to get in the were;inefficiencies in -the/;, back door, Mr Peters said.