Private Investment on the Rise at EU Airports
Jennifer Billock March 09, 2016
Forty-one percent of all European airports now have private ownership, nearly doubling the 2010 percentage.
In 2010, a study was conducted to see how many European Union airports were owned by private investors. At the time, only 22 percent were — but a recent update to the study shows that number has nearly doubled to 41 percent. The increase is partly due to a drive to stay competitive and partly due to the benefits given to properties run as businesses instead of public structures.
“This wider process of ‘commercialization’ of the European airport industry has had far-reaching consequences — not least in the domain of airport competition,” Oliver Jankovec, ACI Europe’s director general, told Skift. “Indeed, the process of change has if anything turned full circle. Increased competitive forces have pushed airports of all sizes to fight for route development and traffic growth, to become leaner and more efficient, to boost service quality and to find the optimal means of financing investments.”
Historically, privatization of airports has been controversial; the original 2010 study shocked many people. When AENA, the world’s largest airports operator in passenger numbers, in Spain went private, the public resisted the change. But Jankovec told Skift that even those European airports that are fully public operate as independent entities, so the change is not that drastic overall.
“Ultimately market pressures are blind to whether an airport is publicly or privately owned,” Jankovec told Skift. “Indeed, the distinction between public and private airports is perhaps beginning to blur and lose significance with some of the most active investors in airports actually being themselves airport operators with some degree of public ownership.”
[Photo: AP]
