IATA confronts Japan re charges

IATA has urged the Japanese Government to review its air transport infrastructure and related charges to enhance competitiveness.

IATA chief Bisignani specifically targeted charges for international operations at Haneda Airport:

“Charges must follow ICAO principles. That means transparent charges, no cross subsidization and consultation with users. International and domestic operations use the same infrastructure. There is no justification for international charges to be higher. In fact, the increased traffic should reduce unit costs.

“Setting such a high charge for Haneda ignores the natural impact of added capacity to reduce unit costs. And it misses a great opportunity to drive efficiencies at both Haneda and Narita which should compete on costs and services to serve the Tokyo market. Moreover, these airports must be able to compete for hub traffic at Hong Kong, Incheon, Shanghai and Beijing to serve the growing Chinese market. But that won’t happen with costs double that of successful airports like Singapore’s Changi.”

And on a broader front, Bisignani called for a more coherent aviation policy from the Japanese Government:

“Infrastructure must meet the demands of passengers. Airlines cannot continue to pay for airport infrastructure that is developed for political purposes. We need, for example, to sort out the situation in the Kansai region. The five runways of Itami, Kansai and Kobe serve 36 million passengers a year. Singapore runs its successful hub serving 37 million passengers on just 2 runways and with much cheaper costs.”

IATA pointed out that Japan is a mature market on the doorstep of the world’s fastest growing aviation market, China. Yet over the last decade the Chinese international market has grown from 500,000 seats per week to 1.4 million, while Japan has remained virtually unchanged with weekly international seats growing from 1.2 million to 1.3 million.

Bisignani said that “Japan must urgently put its aviation house in order to compete in the Asia-Pacific market. The open skies bilateral with the US was an historic achievement. I encourage the Government to continue to push for liberalization and join IATA’s Agenda for Freedom initiative to free up antiquated restrictions on market access and ownership. With the country’s largest international carrier in bankruptcy, in parallel to liberalization, the government must aggressively and urgently address cost issues to rebuild competitiveness.”