European airports are days away from closure due to an imminent loss of war risk insurance cover following the September 11th attacks on Washington and New York, an industry body said today.
The Airports Council International, which represents more than 450 airports accounting for 90 per cent of Europe's commercial traffic, said insurers had cut third party liability war risk cover offered to airports to between $5 million and $50 million per incident from $1 billion before September 11th.
The severely reduced insurance cover for acts of terrorism or war currently proposed by insurers is inadequate and risks closing the doors of Europe's airlines within days unless a solution can be found, ACI said in a statement.
Airlines have also been hit by the same reduced insurance cover but like the airports, were granted emergency government cover for an initial one-month period.
The European Commission said on Wednesday this could be extended for airlines to the end of the year. But the ACI said this extension did not apply to airports and that their emergency government cover would end on October 25th.