Some UK airports are extremely profitable, with Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted all bouncing again strongly after the Covid pandemic. The UK’s busiest airport, Heathrow, dealt with a report variety of passengers in February: a median of 200,000 per day.
But some smaller British airports don’t even register 200,000 travellers in a yr. Many depend on public subsidies to outlive, for social and financial causes. Highlands and Islands Airports, which takes care of 11 airports in Scotland, acquired £56m in subsidy within the newest monetary yr – a whacking £40 for each passenger who used its services.
Different airports should not so fortunate. This century, six English airports have closed – most not too long ago Doncaster Sheffield. Sixteen months after the ultimate passengers departed, the South Yorkshire airport is the topic of a rescue bid.
So which airports are toast – and which may very well be revived? These are the important thing questions and solutions.
The six airports which have closed to business flights this century
Sheffield Metropolis
Flights on the first South Yorkshire airport started in 1998 with home hyperlinks to London Metropolis, Belfast Metropolis and Jersey, and worldwide connections with Amsterdam, Brussels and Dublin. These routes had been progressively cancelled, with the ultimate flights to and from Belfast Metropolis in August 2002.
May it reopen? No. The location is now a part of Sheffield Enterprise Park.
Coventry
This can be a bizarre one. Baginton aerodrome, southeast of Coventry, has been going since 1936. In 2004, the large tour operator Tui determined to base a brand new finances airline, Thomsonfly, in Coventry – and acquired the airport.
The pondering was that working from its personal airport can be cheaper and simpler than utilizing Birmingham (13 miles west) or East Midlands (33 miles north).
The services comprised a jumble of non permanent buildings. Thomsonfly, a belated and botched response to the success of easyJet and Ryanair, duly took off, and over the following 4 years there was fairly a Mediterranean-focused community from Coventry. Even Wizz Air got here in with flights to Gdansk and Katowice. However in 2008, after the Excessive Courtroom turned down plans to construct a everlasting terminal, Thomsonfly went away. Completely.
Tui now has a flourishing presence at Birmingham airport, although it now faces competitors from easyJet in addition to Ryanair and Jet2.
May it reopen? Coventry airport continues to perform as a common aviation aerodrome for small plane. There aren’t any plans for a business revival.
Plymouth Metropolis
The airport north of town centre opened in 1925. Like many smaller airports, it was dropped by British Airways throughout a cull on home routes. On the one event I used it, in 2004, the expertise was calm – with solely 9 passengers on my Air Southwest flight to Gatwick (179 miles away) through Newquay (39 miles away). Different hyperlinks served Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, Jersey and Cardiff – simply 75 miles away by air, however greater than twice as far by highway or rail. By 2011, the airport had closed.
May it reopen? Actually, in accordance with Plymouth metropolis council chief Tudor Evans. Final month he mentioned: “We’re a serious metropolis, we now have ambitions to develop and thrive and an airport have to be a part of that story.”
Manston
What may probably go incorrect? The previous RAF Manston is positioned within the far northeast of Kent, on the Isle of Thanet. That provides Manston airport a giant benefit: Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Amsterdam are not less than 20 minutes nearer to Manston than to Heathrow. A flippantly used airport at an excessive a part of Kent, 66 miles from the centre of London, avoids congestion on the bottom and within the skies over London – the busiest air-traffic management area on the earth.
Entry from the capital on the M2 and the A299 (the motorway’s continuation into Thanet) is straightforward. Because of the HS1 rail line, Ramsgate station is simply 79 minutes from London St Pancras, with the airport about 5 minutes past.
But repeated makes an attempt to run scheduled flights from Manston have failed. In September 2004, I used to be aboard the primary EUjet flight, to Dublin; the next July, the airline went bust. Since then Flybe has collapsed not as soon as however twice. However earlier than it did so the regional provider axed its routes from Manston to Edinburgh and Belfast.
KLM’s Amsterdam service took off from Manston, however not financially. The ultimate scheduled flight from Manston departed for the Dutch capital on 9 April 2014. Since then, the airport has had fairly a profitable sideline as a standby lorry park for Brexit-related site visitors chaos in Kent.
May it reopen? Sure, in accordance with RiverOak Strategic Companions, whose intention is “reviving Manston airport as a profitable and worthwhile airfreight hub, of nationwide significance, with complementary passenger and engineering companies”.
Blackpool
The yr 2014 wasn’t nice for small UK airports. As Manston shut down, Blackpool airport on the Lancashire coast was going by way of its loss of life throes by way of scheduled flying. Squire’s Gate airport had an fascinating historical past. Over time many routes had come and gone together with a frequent Ryanair jet hyperlink with Stansted, a Tui constitution programme to the Med, and a prop-jet connection to Biggin Hill airfield on the London-Kent border. The restoration of direct trains from Blackpool to London seems to have been the loss of life knell. The final passenger flights departed in October 2015.
May it reopen? Blackpool is open and thriving for common aviation and enterprise flights. In 2022, it dealt with extra flights than Teesside, Leeds Bradford, Bournemouth and Southampton. However the prospects for extra passenger flights with Manchester airport simply 85 minutes by direct practice look bleak.
Doncaster Sheffield
RAF Finningley, six miles from Doncaster and 19 miles from Sheffield, closed in 1995. A decade later, it reopened as Robin Hood airport – with Tui as soon as once more a eager proponent of a brand new, low-cost departure level for UK holidaymakers. However Doncaster Sheffield has 4 competing airports inside an hour’s drive. It’s 28 miles from Humberside, 38 miles from Leeds Bradford, 46 miles from East Midlands and 53 miles from Manchester. DSA, because it had change into, closed in 2022. The proprietor, Peel Group, mentioned on the time: “No tangible proposals have been acquired relating to the possession of the airport or which deal with the elemental lack of economic viability.” Guarantees by the then-prime minister Liz Truss to “defend this airport and this infrastructure” had no impact. The final flights touched down in November 2022.
May it reopen? Sure. The mayor of Doncaster, Labour’s Ros Jones, has signed a deal for the native council to take over the airport. However it isn’t clear which airport operator could be excited about operating DSA, or which airways would possibly fly there.
On monetary life help
Every of the nations of the UK has an airport that’s saved afloat by way of heavy subsidies.
Prestwick, Scotland
This excellent airport, southwest of Glasgow, is widely known as the one British soil on which Elvis Presley set foot – throughout a refuelling cease for a US navy flight from Germany to the US. For many years Prestwick was a primary transatlantic airport, with British Airways providing each day departures to New York. However its location on the beautiful Ayrshire coast is hard for many individuals in Scotland, and routes regularly eroded. In October 1995, Ryanair took the revolutionary step of opening a brand new home route in Britain, from Prestwick to London Stansted, for £19. Ryanair remains to be the one business operator at Prestwick, usually with two or three flights per day. The Scottish authorities owns Prestwick, and “it stays ministers’ long-term intention to return Prestwick airport to the non-public sector on the applicable alternative”.
Teesside, England
The airport whose railway station had solely two trains per week was a basket case when Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen introduced it again into public possession somewhat than enable Peel Holdings to flatten the positioning and construct homes. Teesside was the primary airport within the UK to scrap the 100ml restrict on liquids in hand baggage. Aside from that, the primary pleasure is the twice-daily Amsterdam hyperlink and occasional Ryanair flights. Final yr the airport misplaced £2.26m – representing precisely £10 per passenger.
Cardiff, Wales
Over the previous 20 years, passenger numbers at Cardiff have roughly halved, whereas Bristol airport now handles about twice as many in the identical timeframe. The capital’s airport, southwest of town, is struggling to draw passengers again to pre-pandemic ranges. Whereas virtually each UK airport grew in 2023 in contrast with a yr earlier, the newest figures from the Civil Aviation Authority present a slight drop at Cardiff – with solely 837,000 passengers utilizing the airport.
Losses totalled £4.5m within the yr to March 2023, with the Welsh authorities making a grant of £5.3m.
Metropolis of Derry, Northern Eire
“CoDA” is an excellent gateway to town of Derry/Londonderry, in addition to County Donegal within the republic. However because the third Northern Eire airport, after Belfast Worldwide and George Greatest Belfast Metropolis, it has at all times confronted challenges. Retaining the airport going prices over £3m yearly, and the native council is searching for additional funding from Stormont.
