Rex chief Neville Howell accused Wagga council of “greed or incompetence” and of treating its airport as a “convenient cash cow”. He called on the federal government to snatch back control of the Forest Hill facility.

Wagga council stands accused of trying to slug local passenger an extra 35 per cent in airport taxes, which would “increase the costs to the regional operators by $760,000 in a year”.

“This would bring their passenger head tax revenue from $2.21 million a year to $2.97m a year,” he said.  “Wagga airport’s head tax revenue has increased by a compounded 5 per cent a year for the past decade and the council still felt the need to make a grab for an additional $760,000 a year.”

However, council general manager Alan Eldridge said head taxes were “well below” a number of other regional airports and that some of the figures quoted were demonstrably inaccurate.

“As a city we simply cannot keep borrowing to pay for annual losses at Wagga Airport, which has been the case for the past five years, there is a limit to how much cost-cutting we can do,” Mr Eldridge said.

“It also needs to be acknowledged that some carriers have had long-term financial concessions originally designed to assist in the development and start-up of their business into the Wagga market. 

“In reality we have no desire to increase fees to any party, but we have no choice.”

Wagga airport runs at a loss and the increased fees will go towards the costs of running the facility, not back into council coffers. Council will continue to hold negotiations with relevant parties in relation to passenger head tax.

Councillor Paul Funnell said Mr Howell had cherry-picked figures to suit his argument and the price hike was closer to 16 per cent than 35 per cent, but conceded council rushed negotiations.

“The airport runs at a loss, but it’s how 200,000-plus people visit our city, so it’s a balancing act,” Cr Funnell said.

It is expected Rex and Qantas Link will pass on council’s price hike to airline passengers from February 1. 

While council’s new fees and charges were on public display for 28 days around the local government election period, they were adopted behind closed doors in a confidential meeting of councillors late last month and details have since been removed from the public domain.

Council’s written statement in response to criticism from Rex can be found here.