Drivers dropping off passengers at Faro airport will be allowed ten minutes, or face stiff charges.
ANA wants to control car access at the departures drop off point at Faro and other of its managed airports and already has installed machines to read number plates and record time elapsed.
In fact ANA is closing down all free unlimited access for drivers at its busiest airports in Faro, Oporto and Lisbon.
The plan developed by the French-owned company is to close the curb side drop offs, weakly blaming congestion and it’s need to ‘seek to streamline and reorganise the departures and arrivals at curb sides of passenger terminals in order to promote operational efficiency.’
ANA management’s other facile arguments include ‘good environmental practice’ as it strives for ‘improved service quality by discouraging excessive use of the spaces which impairs the airport operation and users.’
The company said today that the new ten minute rule applies to all vehicles and emphasises that the first ten minutes are free and that with "these ten free minutes, the experience of dropping off or picking someone up at the airport will be smoother, more convenient and faster, since vehicles can stop right next to the terminal and find free space."
The company has not yet listed the charges for those staying more than ten minutes, how these will be applied, how customers can challenge the recorded time spent if there is a queue to leave and where the complaints book is located.
This new measure is part of a strategy to raise non-aviation revenues which do not need significant investment, hence income goes straight to the bottom line.
The company denied emphatically that this move is a question of income, pointing out that a user who comes to the airport twice a day to drop or collect passengers pays nothing if he or she does not exceed ten minutes. ANA's statement did not cover what happens if a driver visits three times a day.
ANA says it is applying this Kiss & Fly concept already used in other airports such as Paris Orly, Chicago, London Heathrow, Brussels, New York JFK, Bologna and Nice.
ANA’s chief, Ponce Leon, has stated to Parliament that he intends also to introduce changes for taxis operating at Lisbon airport in order to "control the quality of service" provided.
What happens in Lisbon may be rolled out in Faro and, as with all these revenue raising measures such as the car-hire tax, the government, consumer groups and associations all are powerless to intervene as ANA is no longer owned by the taxpayer.
