Airlines have threatened to raise the price of plane tickets due to the amount they have to pay for air traffic control services.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said this week that the amount aviation companies will have to pay to fund the UK’s air traffic control system will rise by 43p per passenger after chaos in airports this summer. From now to 2027, the average charge will go from £47 to £64 per service unit which is a measure of a flight’s distance and weight.
The CAA said that this is a rise of 36%. It means the average passenger cost will rise by around 43p to £2.08 per flight. Despite the increase the charge is still lower than the average level between 2015 and 2019.
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The rise has come so that air traffic control company Nerl can get back its losses made during covid. CAA chief economist Andrew Walker explained: “Our decision will provide the resources and investment required for Nerl to provide a resilient, high-quality service for passengers and modernise its services, while recovering costs from the pandemic, which is consistent with the traffic risk sharing arrangements in Nerl's licence at the time.”
Tim Alderslade, the boss of trade body Airlines UK, said that the change could mean higher prices for customers. He said: “This is yet another kick in the teeth for passengers who have been plagued by issues this summer including the August Nats IT failure and will inevitably end up footing the bill of millions of pounds for increases that simply cannot be justified.
“It remains unclear what action will be taken to ensure airlines and their customers do not see a repeat of this disruption.” Customers may question why the cost increase has to be passed on to them.
Over the summer Irish low-cost airline Ryanair announced that its net profit multiplied by four times in the first three months of 2023, reaching over £600 million despite a significant increase in costs. The failures earlier this summer caused widespread disruption to thousands of flights across the UK. The problems at National Air Traffic Services (NATS) in August forced airlines to pay for passengers' accommodation, and cancel around 2,000 flights.
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