Sky’s the limit in airport rip-off
I usually pay €18 to park at Cork Airport from Tuesday through Friday, but on last Friday (September 9) the charge was €25 - a staggering 56% increase.
For an increase of that magnitude I wondered what extra service I was going to get. Would the car park - ‘long- term no 2’ - now be paved? Would the potholes be filled in?
Would my car continue to be covered with the usual weekly collection of dust and grit from construction work? Would the shuttle bus turn up, or would I still have to walk half a mile to the terminal? You know the answer - nothing had changed.
So where’s the justification for increasing the charges so much? In any normal market I could just move to a different supplier when the price increases, but not in Cork Airport: the new authority has a monopoly - it owns all the car parks.
Price increases like that wouldn’t happen if there were competing car parks at the airport. We now have the ludicrous situation where the parking fee can be higher that the airfare.
So who protects the consumer at Cork Airport? I asked at the Aer Rianta desk, the car parking service desk and the driver of the shuttle bus if they know who had sanctioned the increases. They all had the same answer - “it’s the new board”. The first thing they appear to have done is increase costs for airport users.
We need action to control anti-consumer monopolies like Cork Airport. We need consumer representation on “the board,” people who are interested in delivering good value service to airport users. They need to be forced to justify prices increases to a regulator and at least one of the car parks should he given to a separate company which will compete with “the board”.
I look forward to the new terminal at Cork Airport; let’s see how many competing coffee or duty free shops it contains.
Let’s see if the existing terminal is given to Ryanair or Easyjet to compete with any new charges introduced unilaterally by “the board” when the new terminal opens.
Finbar Walsh
Lissagroom
Crossbarry
Co Cork
