Taxi drivers who service the Václav Havel airport ceased to provide services as a protest against bad financial conditions, and did not land cars in front of the airport terminals several times during March 2019. At those times, long queues formed in front of the airport halls and tourists waited sometimes more than an hour for replacement vehicles of other taxi service providers.
Taxi drivers employed by the airport taxis Fix Taxi and Taxi Praha complain about the management of their companies. Allegedly, both carriers have already introduced disadvantageous charges to drivers. Furthermore, they forced the drivers to ride out of the stations, which were plus service fee, which the customer had to pay. Companies are allegedly getting more commissions, but it drives away customers of contract drivers. According to some drivers, each contractual driver then pays approximately 27 thousand per month for the opportunity to park in the first row in front of the terminals and instead of being able to drive more people, they have fewer customers. According to a taxi driver spokesman, Mr Pelikán, after the organized protest, companies started to give notice to taxi drivers.
Drivers are also bothered by the internal policies of local businesses, which sell their services at a high service charge, therefore the ride is overpriced. “The price of an airport taxi is so high that the customers prefer to choose competition in the form of Uber or Taxify and other companies or taxi providers,” the taxi drivers explain.
Protesters claim that if taxi drivers add rent for the parking spaces and other charges to the Prague airport, work ceases to pay off, or they have to choose other practices, such as driving on the Prague circuit for a bigger mileage, to artificially raise the fares. It is usually impossible for the drivers to pay all airport charges and still drive people for 600 to 800 CZK from the airport to the centre of Prague.
According to the association of Czech taxi drivers, not only do drivers suffer from the high airport fees, but customers especially suffer from high-cost fares. In addition, according to them, the airport taxi is burdened with disproportionate costs associated not only with high fees but also demands on the type, quality and age of the car.
According to the airport spokesman, these strikes by taxi drivers do not cause any traffic problems on the roads and traffic is smooth, because they only block the private car parks. The strikes only concern the passengers who use Fix Taxi and Taxi Prague (Tick Tack) located directly at the airport. Passengers are advised to book transportation prior to arrival via some other airport carrier.
Similar protests were held several times in recent years, due to Prague taxi drivers resenting the Uber service.