For example, the government froze the amount of rent in apartment buildings by a regulation last week. The tenants of Prague Airport therefore sent a letter to the Ministry of Finance, Alena Schillerová, who is supervising the company in her capacity.

“Leases are set at parameters that count for 17 million passengers a year. At present, however, traffic is zero and stores are closed, “said Richard Procházka, CEO of Lagerdere Travel Retail, at MF DNES.

In addition, the company, which operates duty-free shops and a network of Relay press and tobacco shops at Prague Airport, does not expect to return to normal tracks in the foreseeable future. According to the company, the decline in transported persons will continue over the next year.

At present, the operators of partner taxis dispatchers also have practically zero. Both operators – Taxi Prague and Fix – must pay the future airport according to the contract to pay every five million starts. According to Jan Otta from the Fix taxi service, this also increased the airport by inflation, back to January 1 this year. “This represents an amount of 150 thousand crowns per month, including VAT,” Otta said.

Even six weeks of negotiations did not bring an acceptable agreement for all participants. “Negotiations on the modification of the terms and conditions were suspended by the landlord against all tenants, stating that the adoption of a law on certain measures to mitigate the impact of the SARS-Cov2 coronavirus epidemic on tenants of business premises cannot be concluded with tenants,” says the open letter. by which sixteen companies are trying to return the airport management to the negotiating table.

In addition to these companies, the complaint was joined by, for example, the handling company Menzies, glass dealers Blue Praha and Moser, the British toy retailer Hamleys, or the company Am Rest representing the brands KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks.

They argue, among other things, that the rent at the airport is many times higher than in ordinary shopping malls. Thus, even much smaller outages in the number of visitors than the airport is currently experiencing will, under the current conditions, lead to the cessation of their business activities.

“The goal of Prague Airport is by no means to increase rents, and we certainly do not want to change the contractual conditions in this regard. What we have done in recent days has been the indexation of rents to inflation according to standard inflation clauses, which are normally included in leases for securing the value of rents over time. We reported the indexation of rents to tenants at last year’s inflation rate, ie 2.8 percent, in accordance with the applicable agreements, “said airport spokesman Roman Pacvoň.

According to the airport, too strict rules of the contract are the main problem, why it has not yet been possible to find a way to relieve tenants with payment. The Public Procurement Act, which the state-owned airport must be governed with, is not known for any similar instrument for such an emergency. “For this reason, we are continuously consulting on the possibilities of legislative changes, for example with the Ministry of Regional Development. We also asked the Office for the Protection of Competition for an interpretative opinion on the wording of the Public Procurement Act regarding the possibility of changing the terms of lease agreements, which responded to the current very specific and unpredictable situation, “added the airport spokesman.

Duty to wait

For example, for these taxis, even an almost empty airport does not mean that their drivers can go home. According to the contract, customers must deliver the car under penalty of five minutes 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Today, drivers arrive in front of the airport when the expected plane is to arrive at the airport.

“From about mid-March, our volume will decrease to about five percent of the 2019 average, then to almost zero,” says Otta.

Of the regular flights currently at the Prague airport, only routes to Minsk in Belarus and Sofia in Bulgaria remain. After the pause, CSA launched its first flight on Wednesday. The route between Prague and Amsterdam was supposed to be a test of whether there is interest in air transport. The carrier plans further flights until the second half of May.

Number of persons with covid-19 by region