Pegasus chief speaks out against ETS

The head of Turkish low cost carrier Pegasus Airlines has added his voice to the detractors of the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), under which carriers have to pay for exceeding an EU-set limit on carbon emissions.

Speaking exclusively to Arabian Aerospace general manager Sertac Haybat said that like many other carriers in the Middle East – he opposed the move.

“I don’t think the intention is to protect the environment, “ he said. “It’s to create additional income for the European government,” he said bluntly.

“Deploying these rules in only one part of the world doesn’t make any sense in my opinion. If you’re going to have emission charges it should be throughout the world.”

He pointed to one obvious anomaly; aircraft taking off and landing in EU nations would be subject to the charge, yet those overflying the EU would not.

Haybat also talked about the aborted IPO that the airline had which it called off in January 2012. It had initially planned this for Q1 2011, but the gathering global economic crisis created poor market sentiment for a stock market launch.

“An IPO is not a ‘must’ for us,” said Haybat. “Of course, it would give us more funds to expand operations but we also like the corporate governance by which public companies are ruled.” Indeed, he added, the airline was adopting

such internal regulations even without going ahead with a public offering, believing that these helped create financial and regulatory discipline.