29. 06. 10. - 14:00

No more delays pledge for Skylink 'scandal'

Vienna International Airport (VIA) supervisory executives claimed the Skylink terminal project was going as planned despite a four-year delay.

Supervisory board boss Christoph Herbst announced today (Tues) the VIA board ensured costs of building the new terminal would not surpass 830 million Euros. Herbst added that there was no need to change the scheduled opening date of mid-2012.

The lawyer – who became a household name by representing the victims of "incest monster" Josef Fritzl – however stressed: "I think it would be inappropriate to claim that the project was on track. There are always certain insecurities with such a complex project."

Yesterday’s meeting of the board and the supervisory committee came after VIA was forced to postpone the planned opening date of Skylink several times. June 2008 was scheduled as opening date when construction started in 2005 – before a report by weekly magazine profil uncovered that VIA was unable to keep costs at 400 million Euros as it had been announced.

Work came to a halt and Federal Audit Office (RH) experts checked the books after the revelation earlier this year. Construction at Austria’s biggest airport was restarted recently, but profil claimed only around 100 workers were currently busy.

The provincial governments of Vienna and Lower Austria hold shares in Flughafen Wien AG, the listed firm which manages VIA. Especially Vienna leaders fear the RH will present its findings ahead of the city elections set to take place in October.

The project is already widely regarded as one of the biggest business scandals in post-war Austria regardless of what the RH’s report holds.

Newspapers have speculated VIA board spokesman Herbert Kaufmann will be forced to step down over the claimed irregularities in the Skylink project. But the businessman stressed he had the full support of the board.

Magazine profil quoted an unnamed member of the supervisory board as saying: "The unsatisfying thing is that the board members only get things going when someone from the supervisory board kicks their ass. The situation reminds me of a classroom."

The reputation of the Skylink project received a massive blow a few weeks ago when business weekly Format claimed that an independent expert team discovered more than 3,000 failures in what has already been built of the new terminal.

The article has it that around 500 of the mistakes were categorised as "average" or "severe", with some of them posing potentially life-threatening consequences for customers.

Peter Malanik, co-chief of Austrian Airlines (AUA), warned that further delays in building Skylink would be "really bad".

AUA is VIA’s biggest customer. The airline recently complained the standard of service at VIA decreased dramatically over the past few years, while the airport remained one of Europe’s most expensive for airlines.

The overall number of passengers at VIA soared by 6.3 per cent to 3.89 million in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same time span last year – despite the temporary shutdown of the airport due to the ash cloud spreading across the European airspace after the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull.