Originally Posted by
AirportPlanner1
Genuine question. Do you guys in Derry think a twice daily Saab to GLA along with your twice daily ERJ to STN would be a better outcome for the area than the existing handful of flights with FR? Substituting pax numbers for improved connectivity and business appeal?
This is a good question. Ryanair has been a bit of a conundrum for the airport. They attract large numbers of passengers, 80K on each of the Glasgow and Liverpool routes, but are rumoured to have a deal paying as little as £100 for each turn around. So each passenger is contributing less than 50p to airport fees.
The threat to the airport is not low passenger numbers nor lack of flights but the annual subvention of £2 million that the local council have to make towards running costs (capital costs being a further £1.5 million). At its peak passenger numbers were over 400,000 so to break even each passenger needs to contribute £5 not 50p.
Other carriers may not have the clout that Ryanair has and so may pay higher fees per passenger but with Loganair only carrying 12K pax p.a. on the GLA route the higher fees may not outweigh the lower passenger numbers.
The question is whether the additional passengers contribute sufficiently indirectly through parking charges etc to offset lower landing fees.
Certainly higher passenger numbers protect the airport's future even if it is loss making as it seems more important to the economy than if the airport had lower numbers so Ryanair is a benefit in that regard.
1 million passengers is often quoted as the break even point for the airport but that is a lot of routes carrying 12K pax per annum! The biggest help would be a reduction in APD for airports with less than 1 million passengers. The loss to the Exchequer would be minimal and there would be no need for any PSO routes.