Fuentes y cantidades de los flujos de tesorería

4.4.1 Station and ground expenses

Station and ground expenses are all those costs incurred in providing an airline’s services at an airport other than the cost of landing fees and other airport charges. Such costs include the salaries and ex- penses of all airline staff located at the airport and engaged in the handling and servicing of aircraft, passengers or freight. These should include all costs associated with an airline’s lounges for Business or First class passengers. In addition there will be the costs of ground handling equipment, of ground transport, of buildings and offices and associated facilities such as computers, telephones, and so on. There will also be a cost arising from the maintenance and insurance of each station’s buildings and equipment. Rents may have to be paid for some of the properties used, as well as charges for electricity, heating and so on. Clearly, by far the largest expenditure on station and ground staff and facilities inevitably occurs at an airline’s home base.

At some airports, especially the smaller ones it serves, an airline may decide to contract out some or all of its check-in and handling needs. Handling fees charged by third parties should appear as a station ex- pense. Since the crisis period in 2001–4 there has been a strong tend- ency for legacy network airlines to outsource more and more of their handling, away from their major bases, to specialist ground handling companies, as a way of reducing such costs. European low-cost carri- ers have done this as an integral part of their business model. An air- line may contract out of all of its handling including passenger check- in, baggage and freight handling and loading, aircraft cleaning and so on, or only some of these activities. It may pay a global fee irrespective of the aircraft type actually used. However, if the fees paid for

handling to be provided by a handling agent or another airline vary with the size or type of aircraft being used then such handling charges may legitimately be considered a direct operating cost.

Some light aircraft maintenance may be done at an airline’s out-sta- tions and the costs arising from such maintenance work should ideally be included as a direct operating cost under the ‘maintenance and overhaul’ category. But maintenance expenditures are frequently diffi- cult to disentangle from other station costs and are in many cases left as part of station and ground costs.

4.4.2 Costs of passenger services

The largest single element of costs arising from passenger services is the pay, allowances and other expenses directly related to aircraft cab- in staff and other passenger service personnel. Such expenses would include hotel and other costs associated with overnight stops as well as the training costs of cabin staff, where these are not amortised. Unlike pilots, cabin crew are licensed to work on any aircraft type within an airline’s fleet. They are not restricted to one or two types only. Hence cabin crew costs are assumed to be independent of the type of aircraft being used. On the other hand, as the number and grading of cabin staff may vary by aircraft type, some airlines consider cabin staff costs as an element of flight operations costs; that is, as a direct operating cost.

A second group of passenger service costs are those directly related to the passengers. They include the costs of in-flight catering, the costs of accommodation provided for transit passengers, the costs of meals and other facilities provided on the ground for the comfort of

passengers, and expenses incurred or compensation paid as a result of delayed or cancelled flights.

Lastly, premiums paid by the airline for passenger liability insurance and passenger accident insurance should also be included. These are a fixed annual charge based on an airline’s total number of passengers or passenger-kilometres produced in the previous year. The premium rate will depend on each airline’s safety record, on the regions it oper- ates within or to and on the type of insurance cover it requires.

4.4.3 Ticketing, sales and promotion

costs

Such costs include all expenditure, pay, allowances, and so on, related to staff engaged in reservations ticketing, sales and promotion activit- ies as well as all office and accommodation costs arising through these activities. The costs of retail ticket offices or shops, whether at home or abroad, would be included, as well as the costs of telephone call centres, of the computerised reservations systems and the operation of the airline’s internet website. Problems of cost allocation arise. It is frequently difficult, especially at foreign stations, to decide whether particular expenses should be categorised as station and ground ex- penses or as ticketing, sales and promotion. For instance, where should an airline allocate the costs of ticketing staff manning a ticket desk at a foreign airport who may also get involved in assisting with the ground handling of passengers? The same difficulty arises with the costs of an airline’s ‘country manager’ in a foreign country, who may have overall responsibility for sales as well as the handling of passen- gers at the airport.

A significant cost item within this area is that of commissions or fees paid to travel agencies for ticket sales. Commissions are also paid to credit card companies for sales paid for using cards as well as to the global distribution systems for all reservations made on their world- wide computer systems. Finally all promotional expenditure including the costs of all advertising and of any other form of promotion, such as familiarisation visits by journalists or travel agents, also fall under this heading.

4.4.4 General and administrative costs

General and administrative costs are normally a relatively small ele- ment of an airline’s total operating costs. This is because, where over- head costs can be related directly to a particular function or activity within an airline (such as maintenance or sales), then they should be allocated to that activity. Thus, strictly speaking, general and adminis- trative costs should include only those cost elements which are truly general to the airline or which cannot readily be allocated to a particu- lar activity. Inter-airline comparison of these general costs is of little value, since airlines follow different accounting practices. While some airlines try to allocate their central costs to different cost centres as much as possible, other airlines do not do so either as a matter of policy or because their accounting procedures are not sophisticated enough to enable them to do so.

Where airlines cannot legitimately include a particular expense under one of the cost categories discussed above, they may include it as a separate item under ‘Other operating expenses’. If the sums shown under this heading for a particular airline are large, this is usually an indication of poor cost control and/or inadequate accounting procedures.

In document Documento de Registro (página 96-99)