UK AIRPORTS
Better connected?
Regional airports play a vital role in the UK economy, but they are facing several challenges
By BOB PAPWORTH
with Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Interestingly, given that Plymouth’s 2011 closure is blamed on the lack of London links, the capital’s airports are not (or not yet) on Witherall’s hit-list. And thereby hangs a tale…
THREE-TIER SYSTEM The UK’s regional airports – those without a ‘London’ prefix – broadly fall into three categories. There are those like Manches- ter, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow that are sufficiently well-endowed with international scheduled services that their punters don’t need to trek to Heathrow. Then there are the likes of Bristol, Aber-
deen, Newcastle, Leeds-Bradford, and even Southampton and Cardiff, that manage to fill the middle ground. Each has a clearly defined catchment area and, more impor- tantly, a clearly-defined business demand. Finally, there are those, like Plymouth –
and Oxford, Norwich, Belfast City, Dundee and countless others – that are never likely
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to attract the Emirates or the Deltas of this world. They may be able to support one-off services to Amsterdam, Paris or Dublin, but their survival depends, to a great degree, on their ability to feed hub airports that boast links to, say, Chicago, Seoul or Sao Paulo. The big boys, of course, don’t want to play
ball. A tiny turbo-prop takes up as much runway space and time as an Airbus A380 and disgorges one-tenth of the number of passengers – the financial numbers simply don’t add up. Therein lies the rub. Simon McNamara, director-general of
the European Regions Airline Association (ERA), points out that his organisation’s 52 members carry 62 million passengers a year and contribute Ð52 billion to Europe’s GDP. He says that while five airline groups – IAG, KLM/Air France, Lufthansa Group, Easyjet and Ryanair – have a 55 per cent market share on intra-European seats, their size makes them “increasingly slow to react to market demand as corporate complexity and union power weigh them down”.
Meanwhile, more agile regional air-
lines can fill gaps for the large carriers on some routes on a flexible basis. But, says McNamara, “one of the biggest constraints to regional connectivity is the lack of hub capacity in Europe”. He cites a European Commission study
published in December 2015 that found that by 2035 European airports will be unable to accommodate some two million flights because of capacity shortages. More than 20 airports will be operating at or near full capacity for six or more hours each day. This is the key challenge for regional airports for whom the vital element for growing busi- ness is developing and maintaining routes with hub airports. “It is estimated that the economic cost of
being unable to accommodate the demand is an annual loss in EU GDP of between Ð28 billion and Ð52 billion,” says McNamara. “These figures should be setting off alarm bells for planners – but in reality no con- struction or investment is happening.”
BBT November/December 2016 83
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