The Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus has won a nearly three-decade legal battle over more than €100,00 in so-called landing fees for using airports in India – a country that the airline has never flown to nor plans to.
The origin of the dispute dates all the way to 1993 when Aer Lingus entered into an agreement to lease two of its Boeing 737s to a domestic Indian airline, a relatively common practice within the aviation industry.
The aircraft were flown to India, where they were then operated by East West Airlines for three years until the carrier went bust in 1996, leaving the Airports Authority of India out of pocket from unpaid landing fees.
Aer Lingus attempted to repossess its Boeing 737s and repatriate them back to Ireland, but the airport authority held the Dublin-based carrier responsible for the unpaid landing fees.
In order to get its planes back, Aer Lingus was forced to set up a bank guarantee to cover the unpaid fees sought by the AAI, although that certainly wasn’t the end of the matter as far as the airline was concerned.
The legal dispute rumbled on for years, and now, 28 years later, Aer Lingus has finally walked out of court the victor after a judge ruled that the AAI must pay the airline 10 million rupees (€109,980).
The court concluded that while Aer Lingus was the owner and lessor of the two aircraft, the airline could not be held accountable for unpaid fees racked up by another airline that was operating the airplanes.
India has proven to be a particularly tricky market for airlines to succeed in, and there have been a number of high-profile airline failures over the years, in particular, Kingfisher, Jet Airways and, most recently, Go First.
High operating costs have often been cited as a specific issue for airlines in India, with the country imposing one of the highest fuel costs in the world, and expensive landing and airport user fees.
