Originally Posted by
Pat UK
The first thing that it would need is a route, served 12 times weekly, morning/evening Sunday evening thru Saturday morning, to an international hub, AMS wouldn't be viable unless on a codeshare with KLM which wouldn't be likely as KLM are already serving all airports, NCL, MME, GLA, LBA & MAN, surrounding CAX.
I would say AMS is the most likely to happen - KLM have been quite good at serving the smaller regional airports. I dont think the fact they serve airports around CAX is significant - if there's a market there to sustain a flight, they'll serve it. No other airline has expressed much interest in serving regional airports - I cant see Lufthansa or Air France offering flights to CAX.
The only London airport that may be viable is LHR because some 50% of the passengers would not be destination London but destination international, Carlisle to London/Euston might be just 3.5 hours by train but Carlisle to Heathrow is some 4.75 hours and includes 2 changes and walks up/down escalators of 5 or 10 minutes each, complete with suitcases etc. Across the Irish Sea, both BHD & DUB, did appear to be settling nicely in to a viable schedule when operated previously, then there is the opportunity for summer weekend flights, Channel Islands, Ireland or wherever.
As part of the decision to approve Heathrows 3rd runway, there was a requirement to launch routes to new domestic locations. Flybe were a big proponent of this, and released a route plan featuring Carlisle. Obviously they have gone now... so that looks unlikely to happen.
I understand that CAX had quite a thriving flying club activity until the current owners urinated them off, well what better opportunity for new owners to either develop their own flying club business, across the old side of the airfield, and/or encourage the ex residents to return. Reading thru private pilot threads much of the time they are discussing which airfields offer the better deals along with the better grub, trainee pilots need x-country's as part of their training, other pilots need to build up hours just to qualify for a commercial licence, make the landing/navigation fees attractive along with a talked-about flying club cafe/bar and the business shall surely come in.
One of the flying clubs initially threatened to pull out, but I believe they were persuaded to stay. I dont think there's been much decline in flying club activity at the airport - other than during the periods where the airport has been closed. It should recover pretty quickly. I'm not sure there's much room here for growth - there are a lot of GA airfields out there all vying for the same business.
Encourage an on-site maintenance facility with attractive ground rent charges, it doesn't matter if it may be for choppers, light twins or whatever, it shall bring aircraft movements, landing/navigation charges, fuel etc., in.
In order to sustain a maintenance facility, you need a college pumping out graduates with the relevant degrees. There are no colleges around here offering courses in aircraft engineering or similar, so you'd struggle to find the workers. Again there are lots of facilities nearby all vying for the same business. Part of the early plans for the redevelopment did include a significant sized aircraft storage area, however this idea was dropped, and the land has now been split off for office/warehouse development instead.
CAX has the RAF Spadeadam training range as a neighbour, CAX has benefited from military movements previously, market the MoD to come in for refuels, landing/navigation charges, fuel, perhaps overnight parking, and these military types aren't proud, if the grub is good they'll be in the flying club for their pie & chips or whatever and the word shall spread amongst the squadron(s), they'll all be coming in there!
For the RAF, there are plenty of existing bases nearby that they can (and do) use. CAX has picked up a bit of work from the Dutch in the past who have based themselves at the airport for training. There may be a possibility of expanding this, but its not a huge market. Prestwick has positioned itself quite nicely as a transit base for air crew, so would pose significant competition for this market.
And what about the darn great on-site 'Stobart Group' warehouse facility, I'd imagine that the ground rent alone for that would be quite significant.
There's money to be made in them there hills, perhaps not in great abundance but money to be made all the same.
The stobart warehouse will indeed provide significant revenue, as will the land allocated for additional industrial needs next to it. Hopefully that will be enough to keep the airport operating, although I doubt we'll see much more flying than we do now.