Ryanair has brought a High Court challenge to the approval by the Commission for Aviation Regulation of Dublin Airport Authority's (DAA) proposed rental charges for check-in desks at Dublin Airport.

Ryanair claims the charges proposed by the DAA - of €64,751 per check-in desk, including the costs of a computerised check-in service known as CUTE (common user terminal equipment) - are excessive and that the decision to approve them, made by the commission in December 2004, was arbitrary and unreasonable. The claims are denied.

In its proceedings, Ryanair argued it provides its own groundhandling services and is a "self-handler" within the provisions of the European communities groundhandling regulations. Because it does not avail of the CUTE service but instead operates a manual check-in system at its own desks, it claims it should not have to pay for the costs of providing CUTE.

Ryanair contends the commission failed to conduct any proper analysis of the DAA's proposed costs for check-in desk rental. The commission's approval decision is not transparent as there was no logical basis for not reducing the proposed charge, having extracted the CUTE charge and the argument that the charges were discounted was arbitrary, the airline claimed.

The commission had "unquestioningly" accepted the DAA position that there would be no reduction of the rental figure by extracting the costs of CUTE and this rendered the charges approval fundamentally flawed, Ryanair argued. The application opened before Mr Justice John Quirke and resumes today.