East Midlands Airport escapes £12.5m parking price fixing fine
- Published
East Midlands Airport would have been fined £12.5m if it had not cooperated
An airport has escaped a £12.5m fine by admitting it fixed car park prices with a fellow parking provider.
East Midlands Airport broke competition law by telling Prestige Parking Limited not to charge below a minimum price.
The airport, which has now apologised, imposed the minimum price as a condition of allowing Prestige to access its facilities.
The fine was reduced to zero because the airport confessed ahead of a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) investigation.
Prestige Parking, which is no longer trading, was located next to the East Midlands Airport terminal
Richard Moriarty, director of markets and consumers at the CAA, said: "Competition at airports is crucial to ensure that consumers benefit from choice and value for the whole passenger journey, including for services such as car parking at the airport.
"The fact that an airport operator owns land at the airport on which an independent business operates, does not mean that the airport can dictate the price of services sold by that independent business."
'Actively monitored' prices
Prestige Parking was located next to the East Midlands Airport terminal, and operated what the airport described as a "small premium parking facility" between October 2007 and September 2012.
The minimum price - which has not been disclosed - was linked to the price of the airport's own car parking services.
The CAA also found that the companies exchanged information about their prices and that East Midlands Airport "actively monitored" Prestige's prices.
East Midlands Airport is owned by the UK's third largest airport operator
East Midlands Airport is owned by Manchester Airports Group (MAG), which is the UK's third largest airport operator and also owns Stansted, Bournemouth and Manchester.
The operator said in a statement: "We are sorry that this situation occurred and have introduced procedures to ensure that this cannot happen again.
"As soon as we became aware of the issue in 2013, we immediately informed the competition authorities and we have subsequently cooperated fully with their investigation."
Other contracts
The CAA said the fine would have been £12.5m, but the airport had "proactively disclosed details of the agreement" under the Competition and Market Authority's (CMA) leniency programme, "confessed to participation in the illegal agreement" and also "co-operated throughout the investigation".
Prestige Parking also confessed to having broken competition law and co-operated with the CAA's investigation.
It is no longer trading, and the CAA said it would therefore not impose a fine on it.
Manchester Airports Group has now agreed to set up a programme making sure it complies with competition law across all of its business.
It is also reviewing other East Midlands Airport contracts, to make sure they do not break the law.
The airport group is reviewing other East Midlands Airport contracts to make sure they do not break the law