Originally Posted by
shamrock7seal
Is there really enough demand to warrant such huge capacity at BRS? It seems relentless - where is BRS’s saturation point? At this rate they will be overtaking BHX!
There can hardly be any short haul leakage to London airports anymore from the BRS catchment
The airport is currently consulting publicly as it prepares its new master plan to take the airport into the 2030s and 2040s.
The airport projects between 15 and 20 mppa by the 2040s, 12 mppa as early as 2025. It recognises that this will not be possible within the current physical boundaries which means there would have to be some form of dilution of the surrounding Green Belt to allow the physical size of the airport to grow. There will be environmental and other protests but in 2007 the airport managed to have part of the airport site taken out of the Green Belt and placed in a Green Belt Inset so there is already some sort of precedent. Before that though it must persuade the local authority to either abolish or raise the current 10 mppa limit which is part of its planning consents.
https://www.bristolairportfuture.com...for-the-future
https://www.bristolairportfuture.com...considerations
The last CAA passenger survey (2016) shows that 3.246 million passengers with origin or final destination in the South West used LHR, 6.8% of that airport’s passenger numbers, with the figures for Gatwick being 2.474 million, 6.4%. Only the South East and the East of England had more at both LHR and LGW.
No doubt many of these passengers were long haul but the BRS management believes there is still a large number of short haul South West passengers using the main London airports that could be captured.
https://www.caa.co.uk/uploadedFiles/...ort%202016.pdf
Originally Posted by
ATNotts
If I recall correctly Bristol and it's catchment area is rather more affluent, if a deal smaller population wise than BHX, so the growth and some of the destinations it has are perhaps not so surprising.
It is a crying shame that the location of Bristol's airport makes it hard to get to by road and rail, if it was better located (say at Filton) then I think it would be getting very close to catching and overtaking BHX, and also attracting more full service airlines catering for the business traveler.
BHX should be eternally thankful for those politicians that ensure BRS is where it is.
The Bristol region is an extremely affluent area but it also has within it some of the most deprived wards in the country. Bristol is also well placed at a national motorway and rail ‘crossroads’, with the position of its airport roughly midway between South Wales and the further South West of England, all of which provides a critical mass that allows the economy of scale that has attracted the relatively few airlines that serve the airport.
Only last year the previous CEO (the new one will not take up post until later this year) said publicly that the airport’s preferred method of growth is with existing airlines, which really means easyJet, Ryanair, TUI and Thomas Cook, with KLM, Aer Lingus Regional and bmi regional through its LH and SN links feeding the hubs. The airport would not overlay capacity on top of existing capacity for the sake of it; there had to be a ‘demonstrable need’ that didn’t create an environment where existing carriers found they didn’t have a sustainable business model.
Originally Posted by
Rutan16
TPM totally agreed.
A dozen more 738 or 32x weekly movements across the European Mediterranean North Africa and those Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic Islands will generate more revenue in the shops carparks and indeed in airport fees paid than a daily 788 to anywhere.
And that doesn’t even need any more based aircraft.
This fascination with long haul routes by media, politicians and some enthusiasts alike completely missed the point that aviation is about making money and not fantasy distant and perhaps glamorous destinations on some departure board.
Bristol is doing remarkably well at the moment and fortifying indeed expanding the range of short haul routes is a priority of the business imho.
As for legacies well remember they are typically looking at 30 to 40 % transfer traffic over their hubs, whilst the flexible fares carriers model busts that with far more point to point routes to places people and particularly tourists actually want to go to.
Again concentrating focus on this flexible fares carriers bring with it real choice and depth rather than three flights to Paris a day taking away the potential revenue.
Like it or not I am afraid a significant section of Bristol’s potential catchment to the east of the city region in particular, can be driven away with extreme ease to Heathrow and Gatwick being just a few hours away and leisure travellers are fickle when those so called deals offered via the consolidators today are on the table.
BRS will always be primarily a short haul airport, not least because of the limitations of its runway which, as has already been pointed out, is not being considered for an extension in the new master plan consultation. On another aviation website my alter ego made your point about extra short haul flights generating more ancillary airport revenue than one long haul flight which aids airport company directors to fulfil their primary duty which is to serve their shareholders.
BRS’s current master plan published in 2006 accepts that there was limited demand for direct long haul flights from the catchment - four routes were suggested then; one to the ME and the others to the USA - but that long haul charter routes might find a more receptive clientele, and this is how it is turning out. With the ‘no runway extension’ decision still holding sway it must be presumed that the airport believes the situation has not changed much.
Qatar was probably the only realistic option for a ME3 carrier, given that its B787-8s ought to have had no problem using the current BRS runway to Doha, but for whatever reason (and there are persistent rumours that the decision not to use the airport was not wholly commercially based) they chose not to.
My long haul flying days as a passenger are largely over (flying for me has lost much of its lustre anyway), but my wife and I do fly to Australia every year to visit close family there. I thought that the Qatar service from CWL would save me using the London airports. However, the timings, days of operation and one or two other matters were not ideally suited to us and the specialist long haul travel specialist that we use came up with a too-good-to-refuse-deal to Oz from Heathrow with our usual carrier, Emirates.
Had Qatar been operating instead from BRS, our closest airport, on the same basis as it’s operating from CWL, our decision would have been the same which reinforces your point about the relative ease of reaching LHR from much of the BRS catchment, especially when it comes to long haul. I’d think twice about going to LHR for short haul but clearly many people from the South West still do.