Gulliver Business Travel - blog

Canadian cash cows

IT’S well established that Canadians routinely pay more to fly than Americans and Europeans. One reason is the lack of competition, but another may be the rent the Canadian federal government charges airports, which pass that cost on to the airlines, which in turn pass it to their passengers. Perhaps that’s why so many Canadians regularly fly from American airports.

 

Now one airport has had enough. Calgary Airport is reportedly trying to break its 60-year lease with the federal government and buy the land on which it operates. The airport expects to pay C$22.1m ($21.2m) in rent this year, 40% more than last year, under a complex formula that supposedly adjusts for market circumstances. But Garth Atkinson, the head of the Calgary Airport Authority, believes the regularly reviewed and revised lease is still fundamentally flawed and unfair. “It’s an amazing drain in time and resources to live under this complex lease document,” he said. “There’s no purpose to keeping the huge bureaucracy to inspect airports and administer rent.”
 

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