TravelWatch welcomes the decision by the Minister of Infrastructure that there will continue to be a free parking period (albeit reduced to 30 minutes) at the Airport, and that the disc zone close to the Terminal Building is to be reinstated in the main Short Stay car park for the benefit of those dropping off and collecting passengers.
 
This follows our constructive meeting with the Minister, Chief Executive and Airport Director on 27th June when we were able to express passenger concerns over some of the likely but unintended consequences of completely removing such facilities. The considerable number of people who had taken the trouble to contact both the Airport and the Minister himself clearly also helped.
 
We are pleased that, as proposed by TravelWatch, time has been allowed for proper consideration of public and passenger concerns before a decision was taken, and that a reasonable period has now been allowed between the decision and implementation dates. We would expect this to enable signage to be updated and full information to be provided for car park users ahead of implementation.
 
We believe that the open discussion of these issues, whilst not required by statute, has been helpful to all concerned and we hope that this might become a model for the future handling of such changes.