Upheaval as Schengen swings into action

Date: 26/09/1996

By Mark Turner

AS a rule, Europe's airport managers are a sturdy breed. But there are two words which cause even the toughest to emit a small shudder.

The first is 'terrorism', the second is 'Schengen'.

By the mid-1990s, years of design and practice had created an air traffic system well able to cater for the globetrotter's needs. Then somebody changed all the rules.

As of 26 March 1995, travellers within the Schengen zone expected to pass through foreign airports with the same ease as those on domestic flights.

On the surface, this posed few difficulties. Flights between France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and the Netherlands would be treated as domestic flights. Flights from anywhere else would be treated as international.

Straightforward and trouble-free? If only life were that simple. For Orly, in Paris, the conversion task was relatively easy. Its traffic tends to be either French domestic, or long-haul international, with relatively few intra-Schengen services.

The Netherlands' Schiphol airport, on the other hand, was presented with a logistical nightmare. When travelling at home, the Dutch tend to drive or take the train. Consequently, Schiphol's domestic arrangements were fairly small-scale, and certainly not adequate to deal with intra-Schengen traffic. And, with only one terminal, the mere rearrangement of passengers between buildings was out of the question.

Schiphol had to split in two, with two of its five piers becoming 'Schengen' while the other three remained international. All airside restaurants, toilets and duty-free shops had to be moved and duplicated.

Since nearly half the travellers who go through Schiphol are transit passengers, with many moving from intra-Schengen to extra-Schengen flights, the airport also had to add a further set of passport checks within the terminal to ease their passage. Finally, Schiphol's operators had to ensure that Dutch or EU passengers from, for example, the UK did not suffer any increase in their pre-Schengen transition times.

Small wonder, then, that the airport was not ready to implement the Schengen agreement in full until last December, nine months after the accord came into force.

Schengen's secretariat claims the system is now running smoothly and tales of airport paralysis are a thing of the past.

Until it expands, that is. Austria is widely expected to join the operation next year, and Italy could soon follow, if its government's promises are to be believed. By 1999, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland could also be part of the club.

All of this amounts to more Schengen passengers, and years of headaches for the airport industry. Alastair McDermid of the airport lobby-group ACI Europe suggests that although Austria's accession alone might not make that much difference to other Schengen airports, current arrangements will not suffice for all future expansion.

Clearly, the biggest challenges will be reserved for the new members. Vienna, with its single terminal and low volume of domestic traffic, may face similar problems to Schiphol. Copenhagen, as a hub for SAS, could also have difficulties before its new terminal opens in the year 2000. Norway, however, is spared the worst through good fortune: a completely new main airport is already in preparation and is being designed with Schengen explicitly in mind.

Existing Schengen airports will need to rearrange their terminals with each change in the traffic. And the cost? While difficult to assess accurately, the total is likely to run into hundreds of millions of ecu, says McDermid, who warns that even in the case of publicly-owned airports, such costs will be met by increased airport charges for airlines.

That does not, however, necessarily mean consumers will suffer. “All airports have a very high capital investment programme already. Schengen would more likely lead to a reassessment of priorities than present entirely new costs. It would be very unusual for these changes to be reflected in ticket prices for consumers,” he says.