STANSTED

Drop off charge now upped to £2.50 and if that wasn't bad enough the orange and green car parks are now pre book meet and greet only you have to use the RED car park half a mile from the arrivals hall for pick ups or arrange for your passengers to phone you when outside

Anyone would think they didn't want passengers using them !!!!!

Cardiff Airport thought that they could get greedy! the consequence being is that many passengers 100's of 1000's now cross the water and use Bristol airport.

My take would be this - Make a half hearted apology by saying the fare is normally xx, unfortunately blah blah airport have put their charges up, as such the fare is plus £2/2.50/3.00/whatever, the longer you leave it then the bigger the gap will get in time, as the airports will keep on putting it up, the more you will end up paying. I feel that this has to be done in order to make people realise that they can and should look for alternatives - and that WE should not be paying in part for their holiday.

Don't the Airports get a slice from the Airlines for bringing passengers to the airport, or do the Airlines get a slice from the Airports for landing passengers at their airport? Ryanair get a nice little payment from Airports for landing huge amounts of passengers and earning the airports money by getting them to shop in Duty Free.

Could Ryanair be getting our car park charges? Something is fishy somewhere.

STANSTED

Drop off charge now upped to £2.50 and if that wasn't bad enough the orange and green car parks are now pre book meet and greet only you have to use the RED car park half a mile from the arrivals hall for pick ups or arrange for your passengers to phone you when outside

Anyone would think they didn't want passengers using them !!!!!

Airlines pay a charge for landing at airports. They also pay a charge for however long they are parked on the apron. They also pay a charge for the use of the steps to get you off the plane, which is why all ryanair planes have their own integral steps front and back, although they are not always allowed to use them. Airlines get charged for using transfer busses to and from the plane they also get charged for the baggage handlers, again why some airlines discourage the use of suitcases. The car park charges are said to be used to reduce these airline costs a bit. As for the shops, they pay a rather large rental to the airport for having the shops. I don't think the airlines get a cut from the sales because they sell their own "duty free" goods in competition with the airport shops. Per square foot of space, airport shops are some of the most profitable in the country. They may be duty free but they are not profit free. Not forgetting the VAT scam operated by some of the shops. Prices in these shops include VAT but if you are travelling outside the EU there is no VAT. Some shops but not all of them will pass on the VAT saving but the others keep it as extra profit. Ok, so airports do have some very large costs themselves, from air traffic controllers, fire crews, security staff, The infrastructure etc and one of their biggest costs will be rates. I would hate to think how much the rates bill is for an airport. It would be interesting to see an actual breakdown of everything to see how much profit the airports are making from each activity.

But if your booked you are Pre booked so why not just add in the meet n greet...or is it a contracted airport firm that's only allowed in there.

The meet and greet car parks are not for us. They are for passengers to park and have their cars driven to a car park. Upon your return your car will be back where you left it to greet you. it is not the same as the meet and greet that we would do.

Simply quote your price, advise customers they pay the airport fees, not you

Not when half the punters phones 8 different firms and they are all out to undercut. If you don't keep fares low you get no work ! Although we do plenty of airports at slightly more than the really cut price brigade your reputation can only get you the jobs at a £5 more than the cheapest and all the other firms watch us with green eyed envy at our workload which has lost us plenty over the last year especially when my idiot drivers post all over facebook about our airport work

It is a very competitive business passing the costs onto the punters isn't an option if you want to hang on to the work !