A trip around the patch at a controlled airport in New Zealand will soon carry a $1 NZD charge under a user fee schedule announced by the Airways Corporation of New Zealand, the “state-owned enterprise” that runs the country’s airspace system. By 2015, however, that same touch and go will cost $3.55 NZD as will transiting controlled airspace and something called a “vicinity landing” that is not defined in the Airways announcement of the fees. Fees for airliners will increase an overall 15.7 percent over the next three years.
The new fee schedule was finalized after six months of consultation with stakeholders, and the airlines appeared to make their case especially well. “As a consequence of the high quality of customer submissions, we have revised Airways’ price increase from the 23 percent proposed in February to 15.7 percent over the three years of the pricing period,” the company said in its release. GA, however, is losing a discount system that presumably benefited big users of the system.
