As you are of course aware, the Airline Group paid £60 million in return for a 46% shareholding in NATS. Users of NATS (both the Airline Group and non-Airline Group members) are now being asked to make a "one-off" exceptional contribution of some £56 million up to 2005. This does not include any element of risk sharing. In addition, users could potentially be expected to make a further "one-off contribution" in 2006 amounting to some £53 million.
Whilst the Government and BAA are to contribute an additional £65 million each, this will not be cost free and returns will have to be paid to them, Other NATS users such as ourselves, however, will be "contributing" a significant sum of money and will receive nothing in return and as we say above, there are no promised improvements in existing service levels. Whilst it is true that the Airline Group will be contributing part of this additional £56 million, we feel that this is not unreasonable, given that they are shareholders of NATS and under normal commercial conditions would be expected to find the additional funding by themselves. It should also be noted that the Airline Group are shareholders and, as such, will get a return on their investment at some stage, as well as owning shares which can only increase in value.
The situation of users having to make a contribution in this way without being treated the same as other investors seems very inequitable. We would welcome your views on this.