It’s the cheap and easy thing to do, right?  Instead of parking, you save money and since you cannot accompany someone into the gate areas, why bother hanging around?

Well, it might still be easy but now two airports in Europe are charging fees for dropping off a passenger.  Both Belfast and Edinburgh airports are instituting a fee to drop someone off.  Not park quickly and let them out.  The mere act of dropping someone off at a terminal will now cost £1 at both of these airports. 

You can read the BBC stories HERE and HERE. 

Both airports are justifying the fee as a “service” and offering that the fee helps them pay for improvements to attract more business. 

In other words:   We want you to pay us to invest in the infrastructure that your taxes are already supposed to pay for. 

Let me offer that this comes dangerously close to being as insulting as a fee based lavatory on an aircraft. 

The air travel industry is grossly overtaxed and overcharged with fees.  An airport is a public asset and benefits the public and is supported already by taxes paid by the public. 

To act as if it is a nuisance to have passengers actually drop off people is more than one step over the line.

Filed under: Airports by ajax