Brisbane Airport charges more to park a car than a plane, airline complaints commissioner named

BRISBANE Airport charges more to park a car than a plane for 24 hours, shock figures show, as airline complaints soar so high they get their own commissioner.

BRISBANE'S airport charges more to park a car than a plane for 24 hours, shock figures show.

The Sunday Mail has found a plane up to 5000kg costs $33.60 to park for a day compared to $42 for a car. Parking a plane is free for the first two hours, while it costs $17 to park a car.

Families and motoring groups are furious, the RACQ demanding Brisbane Airport Corporation lower prices and stop "subsidising airlines".

"Clearly cars should be charged less than planes - it's a pretty easy call," RACQ executive public policy manager Michael Roth said.

The situation has given rise to several third-party parking providers who allow parking near the airport and shuttle-bus pickups and dropoffs at more competitive rates.

The airport made more than $84.6 million in 2010-11 from parking.

The revelation comes as RACQ last week released figures showing Brisbane motorists now paid the most in Australia for an hour of off-street parking - and pay almost four times what they paid in 2001 for weekday rates.

The average per hour was $27.94, compared to $26.71 in Sydney and $17.08 in Melbourne.

Bill and Gaye Martin, both 53, said they were outraged at being slugged $150 to park at the airport after a one-week trip to Cairns.

The cost is double what they would have paid in Melbourne or Adelaide and $28 more than Sydney.

"The price we paid for that is the same as our one-way ticket to Cairns," Mrs Martin, of Mothar Mountain near Gympie, said.

Mr Martin, who said he would have happily paid $75, said: "The term profiteering comes to mind, it's simply outrageous."

Mr Roth said the airport should get more of its revenue from airlines rather than motorists. "What we are seeing, where business have a lot of market power, they use that market power and increase those costs for parking.

"With the Brisbane Airport, motorists have little option but to park or to pay for a cab, which is itself expensive because the airport is generally a long trip from most places," he said.

He said the airport had a monopoly.

Despite the low parking fee for aircraft, Brisbane Airport Corporation spokeswoman Leonie Vandeven said planes paid a landing fee of $66.

"The claim that parking is subsidising the airlines is absurd," she said.

Airline complaints go sky high

BUT parking isn't the only bugbear of air travellers. Bad-tempered call centre operators, dodgy airline food and cancelled flights are in the sights of Australia's first airline complaints tsar.

Transport Minister Anthony Albanese will today announce the appointment of Julia Lines, a former manager at the Health Complaints Commission, to the job.

While customers will still be asked to try to resolve their complaints with airlines in the first instance, Australia's major airlines have agreed to fund the new position to consider disputes that are not satisfactorily resolved.

Ms Lines pledged to name and shame airlines that failed to respond to consumer complaints, predicting that consumers would have a new tool to determine value and reliability for flights.

"The website went live on July 1. So it's all systems go," Ms Lines said.

"The issues we will be covering are things like flight delays, cancellations, refunds, problems with websites and in-flight services.

"Some passengers are clearly encountering turbulence when it comes to airline complaints.

"We will be reporting publicly on the complaints we receive so consumers will have some information now that they don't currently have."

Ms Lines said the top problems consumers were concerned about included flight delays, cancellations, telephone reservation services, fees and charges, baggage services and loyalty frequent flyer schemes.

She warned that airlines' communications with customers and in some cases airlines staff's bad attitude were big factors in disputes that proved difficult to resolve.

"The difficulty customers have in making their telephone reservations - perhaps attitude. Most complaints have a communications aspect to them."

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