I have to agree with you about the train station but this recession won't last forever and things will start to pick up eventually. What was in it for Infratil and Stagecoach when they bought PIK? They obviously saw that the airport had some potential for profit otherwise why would they buy it?
1) minimal capital investment - true but what does that really mean? Doesn't it mean that if someone were to put in some capital investment things might look up? Many organisations buy into businesses despite there having been minimal investment in the past. It's about potential and PIK still has potential in various areas including maintenance.
2) with a railway station built from papier mache - Bit of an exaggeration as the railway station is solid enough - just needs a major makeover and made watertight!
3) with the cargo terminal built in the place they were told was the worst possible place - Easy enough to knock it down and rebuild elsewhere on the airfield. The development plan has highlighted this.
4) with cargo revenue plummeting - It seems to have been 'plummeting' for ages now in the minds of some but it will pick back up again. The next set of quarterly figures will give an indication of whether the plummeting has levelled out.
5) Ryanair having them by the balls....At least the airport still has balls.
A new operator might bring some fresh ideas but I don't expect anyone to take the plunge until the BAA sell off fiasco has been concluded. PIK will be here for a long time to come.
1) minimal capital investment - true but what does that really mean? Doesn't it mean that if someone were to put in some capital investment things might look up? Many organisations buy into businesses despite there having been minimal investment in the past. It's about potential and PIK still has potential in various areas including maintenance.
** The main maintenance operator was Polar who were paid a lot of money to come and left when the bribes ran out. At the moment we have a large and empty B747 hangar, as does MAN oddly enough. This potential has been spoken about for years....
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2) with a railway station built from papier mache - Bit of an exaggeration as the railway station is solid enough - just needs a major makeover and made watertight!
**There is NO money to do this, like the Terminal, the 1994 built railway staton will remain falling down until it actually does fall down. Utterly deplorable welcome to Scotland.
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3) with the cargo terminal built in the place they were told was the worst possible place - Easy enough to knock it down and rebuild elsewhere on the airfield. The development plan has highlighted this.
**With the loss of the main US cargo carrier ( Polar )and the continuing fall in revenues there is no capital investment here in the medium term IMHO.
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4) with cargo revenue plummeting - It seems to have been 'plummeting' for ages now in the minds of some but it will pick back up again. The next set of quarterly figures will give an indication of whether the plummeting has levelled out.
** agreed but with Air France losing a small fortune from cargo operations that leaves Cargolux, who loyal as they are are unlikely to pay for a new cargo apron and warehouses.
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5) Ryanair having them by the balls....At least the airport still has balls.
All of the above points about "potential" were true until the market changed entirely with Ryanair. Hence the airport cannot expect to levy traditional airport charges / passenger fees and has to cross subsidise the operation from other areas like cargo and transit stops. This is partly why Atlas and Evergreen are at Hahn now. There is no scope to raise fees from passenger operations, hence revenue falls cannot be made up as the cargo market is fluid and they'd just lose the rest.
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A new operator might bring some fresh ideas but I don't expect anyone to take the plunge until the BAA sell off fiasco has been concluded. PIK will be here for a long time to come.
I agree completely however the level of service is, in my experience pretty crap. PIK is the only airport where I have been called childish names by someone on the ramp, needless to say he is no longer employed as I made sure I made my feelings plain to management. The Terminal building itself is in a poor state of repair. The large space on the second floor on the East side has been vacant for TWENTY NINE YEARS. I kid you not, it used to be the canteen to watch the apron and eat at, it remains empty......PIK will always be a good DIV field or general aviation field but that's as far as I'm going to go. Wizz will be gone soon as the mass influx of cheap Polish labour is no longer in such demand, they are cutting back already.
Last edited by Skipness One Echo : 20th May 2009 at 14:18.
Some fair points there although I gather that money has been put aside for the Train Station. Also I find the level of service pretty fair and comparable with most Uk airports apart from LHR which is crap. You mention Hahn but isn't Hahn dependent on FR income (or not!) also? Regards the 'east side 2nd floor, are you referring to the old spectator terrace? If so the reason it has been closed for 29 years has been because of the amount of asbestos present (or so I am told).
On a plus point it is good to see considerable increases in military stopover flights.
Regards the 'east side 2nd floor, are you referring to the old spectator terrace? If so the reason it has been closed for 29 years has been because of the amount of asbestos present (or so I am told).
Not exactly. Access to the exterior has been closed, I wonder if the interior is susceptible to asbestos? Doubt it, no I mean the EAST part of the building, the interior has been closed since BA withdrew the VC10 I am told. (Thanks Dad)
A lot of empty dead space there with no income.
As for Hahn, they have been more succesful with the cargo front and were until recently owned by FRAPoart I believe, who also own Frankfurt Main. ie A real airport company.
Last Wizzair service to Katowice was today, meaning just the original two destinations (Warsaw and Gdansk) remain of the four they served from PIK at their peak.
When will the Ryanair winter schedule for PIK be fully released? There's quite a few destinations missing from what's currently loaded (HHN and PSA to name but two) and BVA showing as daily, with the morning flight not yet available.
Also noticed that April's passenger numbers are down by 19% compared to April 2008. Of all the larger UK airports, only LCY has a larger percentage decrease (and then by only 0.3 of a percentage point), although in fairness to both airports, the number of flights decreased by a similar percentage.
I heard Hahn has gone which im very disappointed about i just used it last week handy for Ramstein spotting trips,EDI -Hahn is down to 2 weekly they must have issues there.
PIK doesn't seem to be having a very happy time at the minute.
If you compare the first 4 months of this year to the same period last year, Ryanair's passenger numbers at PIK are down by over 16% and the average load factor for the base is down by over 4.5 percentage points.
Quite a few routes have taken a hammering. All comparisons are for Jan - Apr 09 vs Jan - Apr 08: PSA (average flown LF down to 56% from 69%), WRO (now 55% from 80%), NRN (now dropped: 52% from 61%), HHN (48% from 61%), BOH (42% from 60%). MRS also took a pasting last summer.
All of the above destinations are also operated from EDI and it is clear that this is having a severe effect upon the corresponding routes from PIK - Ryanair are cannibalising their own markets again.
I'm afraid I wouldn't be surprised if PIK lost a based aircraft this winter and if HHN was dropped, PSA became seasonal summer only and BVA (down to 55% from 63% so far this year) became a once daily service after having been twice daily for as long as I can remember.
It's hard to find many positives for PIK. RIX and TFS are the routes with the best loads, although given the long sector lengths, one can only hope that they are profitable.
I doubt if the BVA will drop to one a day. The pax no's are down on the PIK-BVA legs, but the aircraft actualy fly from PIK-BVA then on to OPO in the morning and to TSF in the afternoons, the onward loads are strong.
In reality, I think we will see a steady move to EDI. Long term, my money is on only two or three aircraft at PIK, and the bulk of the flying from EDI.
Hi,
From Sun 25th October BVA-OPO appears to be operated by an NYO-based aircraft flying NYO-BVA-OPO-BVA-NYO.
BVA-TSF continues to be operated by the PIK-BVA aircraft in the evenings. Unfortunately, now that the BVA-OPO has been switched to an NYO aircraft, I fear that the morning PIK-BVA rotation may be toast, at least for the winter.
I agree with your long term prognosis for PIK. Sadly, it looks as though any destination flown from PIK that FR also decide to start from EDI will come under a lot of pressure. Not long ago, I thought that PIK had the potential to reach the figure of 3 million passengers per year. Even once the economy recovers, this goal looks a long way off.
Its a shame, I honestly believe that PIK has the greatest potential of all the Scottish airports that has not been harnessed due to certain managerial decisions.
*Plenty of area for expansion
*Good road and rail connections (yes the station needs improving, my point above)
*A very attractive weather record
*Two good length runways
In comparison to Glasgow at least, its pretty much boxed in by the M8 and Black Cart Water, even if you did expand over the Black Cart Water, surface drainage is going to become a problem. On-top of that there's night time restrictions.
My dissertation was on the relative merits of expansion at BAA Glasgow and Prestwick, after meeting with both Managing Director, you can probably see who's side i'm on!
I hope BVA doesn't drop to one per day. Every so often when the price dictates, we take a day trip to Paris. The 6.40 flight out, after getting the bus, drops you in Paris around 9.45am, witht he bus picking you up at 8pm for the 10.50 flight.
Just over 10 hours for a few euros! Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.
Yes, but some people think that being 45 minutes from Glasgow that Prestwick is the other side of the earth! Prestwick is more convenient for me but Ryanair is putting me off from using the airport because of the number of add ons for anything they can possibly think of and also because they keep cutting back on their schedules. I think it's such a shame that there aren't more airlines and flights at Prestwick.
I guess we're kinda spoilt with BAA Glasgow (8 miles) being so close to the city centre. The majority of places, a 45 minute journey to the main airport is normal
Despite the state of the station, the actual train service is pretty good. Last time I checked there was 3 trains per hour into the city (or one per 20mins). Plus, a 50% discount if in possession of an airline ticket. Normally airport - city transport is a major rip-off source!
Just pulled out a few quotes Mark Rodwell, Prestwicks' Managing Director, provided for my dissertation a few years back that in recent events, provides interesting reading.
“Where our capacity would be restricted would be through the terminal facilities. At present we transit 2.5million passengers a year. This can be increased to 5 millions by adding a few extra check-in counters and another baggage reclaim, but that’s the only real restrictions we have at the moment to increase from 2.5 to 5 million passengers.”
What do you feel is the biggest disadvantage that Prestwick holds?
“Disadvantage would probably be that Prestwick is not well known in the greater part of Glasgow, so achieving that reputation is important to us, there’s a lot of work going on to put that in place.”
“At present, where we’ve seen success is with low-cost point-to-point operations, and that’s where low cost operators get their efficiencies. As soon as you start to introduce transit passengers and transit baggage, that’s where you start to run into time issues, particularly the inability to turn an aircraft around in 20 minutes. So from a low-cost airline perspective the attraction for airports like Prestwick is to maintain point-to-point. However, it does open up the possibility for Trans-Atlantic operators to use Prestwick as a hub, and then distribute passengers out via the low-cost carriers, by fault becoming a hub airport without being a major hub such as Heathrow.”
"Infratil’s strategy at the moment is to buy airports that have future potential which is most definitely the case at Prestwick. As other airports become congested we will look at taking the associated with the over-spill. It’s the same with our other airports in Hamburg and Kent – these airports are purchased with the vision of long-term investments with future returns. Our investors are patient in waiting for these returns to come in. As you attract airlines, you start to build a snow-ball event. The bigger the through-put of passengers, the more airlines you attract.”
I know that £650,000 has been earmarked for Rail Station improvements
20 May 2009
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I gather that money has been put aside for the Train Station
You've been harping on about this money for the rail station for nearly a year and a half now, is it actually coming?
Actually I think it would be a waste of money now, most of the flights are moving form Glasgow Prestwick International to Glasgow Edinburgh International. I think it is all going Pete Tong for GPIA unfortunately, a combination of bad economic climate, setting up the EDI base and bad management. I am so glad I never took that unit off them that I was forced out of because of price.
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