Court suspends Dublin Airport enger cap beyond summer

High Court Reporters

The High Court has agreed to extend the pause it imposed on the enger cap at Dublin Airport.

Mr Justice Barry O'Donnell granted a number of airlines an injunction extending the pause pending determination of the main challenge to the cap.

The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has also been asked to determine a number of issues in the case, and it usually takes around 16 months before its decisions are delivered.

The case concerned decisions made by the aviation watchdog, the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), in setting parameters for the fair and efficient allocation of available landing and take-off slots at the airport, where the demand for those slots exceeds supply. The IAA sets parameters bi-annually for the winter and summer seasons.

Last winter, the IAA set a cap of some 14.4m engers and 25.2m for this summer.

The judge said the balance of justice favoured a situation in which decisions made by the IAA in setting the coordination parameters should not take of a planning condition imposed on the airport capping the number of engers at 32 million per annum.

He said in making his decision, which is subject to liberty to the parties to apply to the court should circumstances require, he had proceeded on the basis that the same logic and legal considerations that led to his decision last November to place a pause on the cap for the summer 2025 season.

Aer Lingus, Ryanair and a consortium of American carriers, Airlines for America, had sought a pause on the cap imposed by the Irish Aviation Authority, limiting enger numbers to 25.2 million between late March and October.

Last week, they asked for an injunction extending it for the coming seasons until their legal actions are finalised.

The airlines claimed the restriction will cost them millions and will also mean they will be deprived of some of their “use them or lose them” take-off and landing slots.

Ryanair claimed, among other things, that the seat cap last winter resulted in a loss of revenue of €35.8 million. If the cap were applied to the summer of next year, it would suffer a loss of some €113 million, it claimed.

If there were a 50 per cent reduction in engers for this winter, this would have serious effects for the travelling public over
the Christmas period, along with price rises and effects on the national economy, Ryanair said.

Similar arguments were made by Aer Lingus and the American consortium.

The IAA was neutral in relation to what had been sought by the airlines but said that if relief was granted by the court, it would not prevent the otherwise orderly progress and setting of coordination parameters.

The airport operator, the Dublin Airport Authority (daa), and Airports Coordination Ltd, which allocates slots, were notice parties in the case.

The daa opposed the airlines' application, arguing the court should not exercise its jurisdiction to grant the relief sought.

The daa said there was a significant difference between, on the one hand, staying a decision on the cap already made by the IAA as part of a full statutorily mandated process and, on the other, making orders affecting a decision (the winter cap) which is yet to be made. It was only after the IAA makes its decision that a challenge should be entertained, it said.

It was also argued that the airlines had not met the threshold for the court to grant the mandatory order sought.

The daa also disagreed with the Ryanair assertion that the capacity of Dublin Airport is 40 million engers. Aviation consultants, the daa engaged, found that baseline airport capacity for all enger categories is 36.5 million per annum, it said.

Mr Justice O’Donnell said that unless the IAA was restrained pending the determination of these proceedings from taking of the 32 million enger condition and imposing the seat caps, it was clear that the airlines will suffer serious irreparable harm.

He adjourned the making of formal orders to Thursday.