$5.00 Passenger Departure Levy at Hamilton Airport to Cease

PRESS RELEASE

17 December 2013

Embargoed until 4.30pm 17 December 2013

$5.00 Passenger Departure Levy at Hamilton Airport to Cease

Passengers departing from Hamilton Airport will no longer pay the $5.00 domestic departure levy as from 1 April 2014. This change results from the completion of the airport’s pricing consultation process with its airline customers.

“Passengers have long been asking for the departure levy, implemented in 2008, to be included in the airline ticket price. The removal of the levy streamlines the departure process for both passengers and airlines,” said George Clark, General Manager – Commercial. “This revenue will now be recovered from the airlines, in line with international best practice.”

The revision of the aeronautical charges announced today is the first such revision since 2007 and results in an increase in airfield charges equivalent to 37 cents per passenger. The new aeronautical charges will also, over a 15-year period, recover the cost of resealing the runway, a $4m project due to be commissioned early in 2014, with an estimated additional cost of $1.08 per passenger. Abolishing the passenger departure levy and transferring this to the airlines will be cost-neutral for passengers.

Mr Clark said “The revised charges do not provide a full recovery for the airport on aeronautical assets. However, the airport needed to carefully consider both the implication of increased costs to the airlines and the financial performance of the airport. Hamilton Airport is committed to working with airlines to improve passenger numbers on existing routes, and a number of marketing initiatives are already under way in conjunction with Air New Zealand to improve airline services for Waikato travellers.”

The revised landing charges applying from 1 April 2014 will be made available soon on the Hamilton International Airport website: www.hamiltonairport.co.nz.

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