BAA ADMITS ANYONE COULD RUN STANSTED FOR £5M LESS P.A.
LOW COST DEAL THE ONLY WAY TO GUARANTEE GROWTH
2012-10-22 — /travelprnews.com/ — Ryanair, Stansted’s largest airline (with almost 70% of traffic), today (21 Oct) warned potential bidders for Stansted Airport not to be ripped off by the BAA/Ferrovial monopoly, who have grossly inflated Stansted’s £1.3bn RAB and have now admitted anyone could run Stansted for £5m less per year*. Ahead of Tuesday’s (23 Oct) opening bids deadline, Ryanair reminded bidders that the underlying non-inflated RAB at Stansted (including airfields, terminal buildings and plant) amounts to just £640m (approx half of Stansted’s grossly inflated £1.3bn RAB).
Ryanair withdrew from the Stansted sale process earlier this month, having been advised by Ferrovial that it would be excluded. Ryanair is not participating in the sale and is not seeking a minority stake, but will continue to explore the traffic growth opportunities it believes are available at Stansted, if and when the new owner of Stansted reverses the doubling of prices which the BAA/Ferrovial monopoly imposed on Stansted’s airlines and passengers in 2007 and which led direclty to a 25% traffic decline at Stansted from 23.8m pax in 2007, to just 18m pax in 2011.
Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:
“Traffic at Stansted continues to decline (down another 4% in Sept) because the inadequate CAA regulatory regime has allowed the BAA/Ferrovial monopoly to double airport charges and inflate its RAB, while other non-regulated UK airports depreciate their assets and lower charges to stimulate traffic growth.
Stansted can return to growth, but only when it is regulated effectively, which will require its passenger charges and its inflated RAB to be halved, thereby eliminating the effect the of BAA’s regulatory gaming in recent years.”
###