EasyJet CEO Calls for Changes in Airport Infrastructure

Costly, congested and poorly run airports and environmentalists with daft ideas are the two biggest barriers to the continued growth of European low-cost carriers, EasyJet CEO Andrew Harrison said last week at the World Low Cost Airlines Congress in London.

“We need a revolution” when it comes to airports, Harrison declared to representatives of more than 100 airlines gathered here.

Many airports are too expensive because they are overbuilt, he said, echoing a complaint that´s also been made repeatedly by the older, network carriers.

Airports, including ground handling, are EasyJet´s biggest cost, in part because airports also don´t really differentiate pricing based on the demands an airline places on its infrastructure, he said.

Furthermore, security lines are long, and countries differ on what is allowed through screening checkpoints, with requirements in the U.K., for example, much more stringent than flights out of Spain.

“We all should be shouting and screaming about this,” Harrison said. He advocates the U.K. keeping the liquid ban, but returning to the previous policy on the size of carry-ons and reducing body searches from 50 percent of passengers to the previous level of 20 percent.

Aviation accounts for about 3 percent of Europe´s carbon dioxide emissions, he said, compared to about 20 percent for vehicular transportation and 30 percent for utilities, and it is the growing low-cost carriers that tend to have the newer, more efficient aircraft and fill almost every seat.