The High Court has dismissed Ryanair Limited’s judicial review challenge to the Commission for Aviation Regulation’s approval of check-in desk rental charges at Dublin Airport and related charges at Shannon and Cork airports.
Mr Justice Quirke delivered judgment on 2 October 2006. He concluded that the evidence did not establish that the Commission had acted unlawfully when it approved charges proposed by Aer Rianta, whose functions had since transferred to the Dublin Airport Authority.
Ryanair argued that the charges did not meet requirements for relevance, objectivity, transparency and non-discrimination under the European Communities (Access to the Groundhandling Market at Community Airports) Regulations 1998. It said the approved fees included costs for Common User Terminal Equipment (C.U.T.E.) at Dublin Airport, which Ryanair said it did not use or require, and that the Commission had failed to adjust the fees accordingly.
Aer Rianta’s application described an estimated annual cost of about €54,951 per check-in desk and proposed an annual rental of €16,718 per desk at Dublin. The Commission approved the applications on 6 October 2004, finding that the charges were below a reasoned estimate of costs. It noted that C.U.T.E. costs had been included in an earlier Dublin costing, but that revised costings excluded them without reducing the below-cost figure for which approval was sought. The approval required Aer Rianta to publish the fees and provide users with a breakdown of charges on reasonable request.
The judge said the Commission, as the specialist decision-maker, could choose criteria consistent with the regulations and the directive. He found that it had consulted airport users, considered submissions including Ryanair’s, and applied relevant and objective criteria. The consultation and publication requirements also supported his conclusion that the process was transparent.
On discrimination, the judge noted that the Commission had considered the bundling of C.U.T.E. costs into Dublin desk charges. He declined to investigate Ryanair’s further allegation that those costs may have been imposed unlawfully on other airport users, saying that was not the court’s function in this case. The applicant bore the burden of proving unlawfulness on the balance of probabilities, and had not discharged it. The claim was therefore dismissed.