Airport Regulation and Benchmarking: Case Study Germany

In Germany, most large airports are owned by the states and/or municipalities in which they are located. Only few airports are partially privatized. As a German peculiarity, almost all airport companies are the largest provider of ground-handling services. There is no official market assessment, but according to academic studies, at least five airports possess strong market power. Regulation is assigned to the state level (usually ministry of transport). Until 2000, a rate-of-return regulation was applied. Later, in some states long-term charging agreements were concluded between regulator and airport. Some of them might be considered to be pure price cap schemes, whereas others are more similar to a rate-of-return regulation. Since 2012, regulation is based on the European directive 2009/12/EC. Today, usually a rate-of-return scheme and the dual till approach are applied. As in most cases states are major shareholders as well as regulators, the independence of regulation has been questioned by airlines and external observers. Moreover, an independent regulator on the federal level might be in a better position to apply benchmarking. From 2008 until 2018, average charges were quite stable (except Frankfurt due to large investment), but in efficiency benchmarking studies, German airports often do not perform well.