Ryanair has taken High Court proceedings challenging decisions of the Commission for Aviation Regulation as to how landing and take-off slots at Dublin airport are to be allocated from summer this year.
The judicial review challenge was initiated this week after the commission, in decisions of February 12th and 13th last, decided to alter the designation of Dublin airport from "schedules facilitated" to "co-ordinated" for summer and winter 2007 with regard to the allocation to slots.
This means that a schedules facilitator appointed by the commission - Airport Co-ordination Ltd (ACL) - will decide on the allocation of slots rather than the existing voluntary system of allocation.
In its decisions, the commission said it had concluded, following consideration of a report of Jacobs Consultancy, that it was necessary to alter the airport's designation because the capacity problems at Dublin would be such as to produce "significant delays" from summer 2007, which could not be resolved in the short term.
Mr Justice Michael Peart this week granted leave to Bill Shipsey SC, for Ryanair, to bring the proceedings aimed at overturning the commission's decisions. Ryanair claims the commission decisions breach the terms of the Aviation Regulation Act 2001 and the provisions of the relevant EU regulations for the allocation of slots at EU airports and are therefore unlawful.
It claims the EU regulations operate on a premise that, from a regulatory and competition perspective, a schedules-facilitated regime for slot allocation is preferable to a co-ordinated regime because, it is claimed, the former encourages competition and fosters new entrants and the development of new routes.
A schedules-facilitated regime, according to Ryanair, offers airlines greater flexibility in scheduling their flights and ensures that airport managers operate their airports "with a constant eye of ever greater efficiency and with due regard to the benefits of competition".
A co-ordinated regime is only warranted if it is shown that the schedules-facilitated regime is no longer working and that unacceptable delays are occurring, Ryanair says. It argues that the EU regulation provides that an airport cannot be designated as co- ordinated, unless and until certain specified pre-conditions are satisfied.
In particular, a co-ordinated regime may only be introduced after a "thorough capacity analysis"showed that there was such a serious shortfall in capacity at the airport that significant delays could not be avoided and that there was no possibility of resolving those established capacity problems in the short term, Ryanair says.