Airport.

[asitis]

https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/air/investment-planned-as-blackpool-airport-comes-under-local-council-control

This could create an opportunity for a service maybe fitted in amongst existing rotations ! I know it's not Liverpool or Manchester, in fact if the world had piles this is where they would put the suppositories, but for some just getting to the UK is the priority and price control would maybe be easier. If ever an airport collapsed because of delusions of grandeur Blackpool is the case study!

 

[Derek Flint]

5 minutes ago, asitis said:

https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/air/investment-planned-as-blackpool-airport-comes-under-local-council-control

This could create an opportunity for a service maybe fitted in amongst existing rotations ! I know it's not Liverpool or Manchester, in fact if the world had piles this is where they would put the suppositories, but for some just getting to the UK is the priority and price control would maybe be easier. If ever an airport collapsed because of delusions of grandeur Blackpool is the case study!

 

I’ve often wondered why BAE haven’t built a small terminal at Warton. It would be able to service everything that Blackpool does and more, and as a result the 500 acres could be sold off for something epic. 

[asitis]

8 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

I’ve often wondered why BAE haven’t built a small terminal at Warton. It would be able to service everything that Blackpool does and more, and as a result the 500 acres could be sold off for something epic. 

Hey Derek, don't advocate closing airports, developers would build over them all if they got the chance !

[John Wright]

2 hours ago, Derek Flint said:

I’ve often wondered why BAE haven’t built a small terminal at Warton. It would be able to service everything that Blackpool does and more, and as a result the 500 acres could be sold off for something epic. 

If Blackpool is, as suggested by @asitis, where suppositories for the piles of world are inserted, I’m not sure what that makes Wharton. 

Not convenient for anywhere.

Blackpool may have a place, in commercial aviation, but not anything of any benefit or interest to the Isle of Man.

Its reliable, regular, reasonably priced airlines we are short of, not destination airports.

And let’s be clear, we might get regular if we regulate routes, we may get cheap if we have open skies. You won’t get both. But regulated routes spell monopoly and high cost. Open skies spell budgets and unreliability if the rotations are end of day after it’s flown half a dozen different sectors.

[Ringy Rose]

1 hour ago, John Wright said:

But regulated routes spell monopoly and high cost.

But not necessarily more so than Open Skies if we don't have a big enough market to support competition. EasyJet have a monopoly on London, the South West and Ireland routes, Loganair have a monopoly on the Scotland route. All are commercial and, let's be honest, all are expensive, inconvenient, or both.

I don't think we need to lose the OpenSkies basis, I just think we need to subsidise flights that can't survive commercially, such as the business flights to London. 

[Andy Onchan]

16 minutes ago, Ringy Rose said:

But not necessarily more so than Open Skies if we don't have a big enough market to support competition. EasyJet have a monopoly on London, the South West and Ireland routes, Loganair have a monopoly on the Scotland route. All are commercial and, let's be honest, all are expensive, inconvenient, or both.

I don't think we need to lose the OpenSkies basis, I just think we need to subsidise flights that can't survive commercially, such as the business flights to London. 

A number of Loganair's routing is PSO related. 

[Ringy Rose]

5 hours ago, Andy Onchan said:

A number of Loganair's routing is PSO related. 

The IOM-Edinburgh is operated commercially AFAIK, as is IOM-Birmingham, though obviously they have the patient transfer work.

But yes, quite a bit of Loganair's traffic in Scotland is PSO.

[Derek Flint]

On 11/5/2021 at 8:06 AM, asitis said:

Hey Derek, don't advocate closing airports, developers would build over them all if they got the chance !

Exactly. We could have a massive safari park with a light rail system that would take you round the tigers, then on to the Pleasure beach.

[Non-Believer]

44 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

Exactly. We could have a massive safari park with a light rail system that would take you round the tigers, then on to the Pleasure beach.

Jebus, don't mention light rail system, Longworth will be all over it like a rash and there'll be another £10M spent....

[littlebushy]

Peel Ports will offer to  build it at no cost to the taxpayer 😉

[NoTailT]

3 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

Jebus, don't mention light rail system, Longworth will be all over it like a rash and there'll be another £10M spent....

 

[flaps]

On 11/3/2021 at 6:29 PM, Ringy Rose said:

The decision to court EasyJet went way above airport management. 

I don't have an issue with EasyJet per se, they have their place. They just can't be relied on to provide essential flights, that's not what they are about. EasyJet are good at shifting people and they keep the other airlines on their toes.

But EasyJet pushed Flybe and Eastern off the Belfast City route, with the resultant loss of regular flights to both Newcastle and Belfast.

I fear the same will happen with Manchester flights.

Eastern were going to come back before Covid, but only because Teesside's mayor was going to pay for it, not us. We're a small island, I don't see why subsidising an airline to serve us is seen as a bad thing. Loganair have interline agreements so they'd be better placed compared to Eastern, but there needs to be an open tender.

If we want to be a grown up finance and gaming hub, a holiday airline flying to Gatwick at random times charging ludicrous fares isn't going to cut it.

I think you're right about "courting Easyjet" being above airport management - that's the only explanation. Easyjet pay half the rate per passenger than Flybe did, so for every passenger they took off Flybe, the airport lost revenue. Not only did they lose revenue, but costs increased and huge amounts were spent on extras for them - an exclusive holding lounge, a £2.5M apron, widening the runoff areas etc. Another issue people will remember was the massive queues. In the Flybe days, the morning departures would be staggered. Say, 60 passengers, 30 seconds each through security, half an hour per plane. But if there's 2 Easyjets in at once, 300 passengers - hours to get everyone through security. So millions were spent on a new baggage scanner, building works to accommodate it and of course the ongoing costs of the contracted out staff to run it. Of course, all this would be OK if the island was chocka with tourists, due to the cheap flights, but it's not. The slight increase in passengers pre-covid was locals going away to spend elsewhere, not new visitors coming to spend here. And of course, we now have less services. Is it better to have a small plane every day to places like, say, Belfast, or a big plane once or twice a week? Is that better service for an island community with no alternative? We used to have 4 or 5 flights a day to Liverpool, similar to Manchester, plus a couple a day to Birmingham. Is one flight a day or less really what we want? Is that actually better?

[Non-Believer]

The Directress' statement at the time was, "Easyjet have come up trumps" with the Gatwick flights?

[asitis]

2 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

The Directress' statement at the time was, "Easyjet have come up trumps" with the Gatwick flights?

I remember her many statements getting more and more ridiculous, they were eventually hidden rather than promoted every time the airport was mentioned !

[Roger Mexico]

4 hours ago, flaps said:

I think you're right about "courting Easyjet" being above airport management - that's the only explanation. Easyjet pay half the rate per passenger than Flybe did, so for every passenger they took off Flybe, the airport lost revenue. Not only did they lose revenue, but costs increased and huge amounts were spent on extras for them - an exclusive holding lounge, a £2.5M apron, widening the runoff areas etc. Another issue people will remember was the massive queues. In the Flybe days, the morning departures would be staggered. Say, 60 passengers, 30 seconds each through security, half an hour per plane. But if there's 2 Easyjets in at once, 300 passengers - hours to get everyone through security. So millions were spent on a new baggage scanner, building works to accommodate it and of course the ongoing costs of the contracted out staff to run it. Of course, all this would be OK if the island was chocka with tourists, due to the cheap flights, but it's not. The slight increase in passengers pre-covid was locals going away to spend elsewhere, not new visitors coming to spend here. And of course, we now have less services. Is it better to have a small plane every day to places like, say, Belfast, or a big plane once or twice a week? Is that better service for an island community with no alternative? We used to have 4 or 5 flights a day to Liverpool, similar to Manchester, plus a couple a day to Birmingham. Is one flight a day or less really what we want? Is that actually better?

Like most things, I think the easyJet policy has to be laid at the door of airport management - though of course other managers and politicians could have intervened if they wanted.  It certainly meant that the fall in business travel etc after 2008 was compensated for in some way - even if most of the increase was more trips off-Island.  And it was certainly extraordinary that the arrival of cheap fares, the lack of which people had used as an excuse for decades, was not used at all to promote tourism to the Island.

But most of the 'extras' didn't arise from the demands of easyJet or any actual needs they had.  They started flying to the Island before the runway extension was ready and most of the other stuff either predates them or was done for other 'reasons'.  At most Reynolds used their potential withdrawal as a threat, but there's no evidence they ever made such threats.