London City Airport reports November 2006 as being the busiest month on record since the Airport opened for business in October 1987. In November 222,787 passengers travelled via London City, a 24% increase compared with the same period last year.
Richard Gooding, Chief Executive of London City Airport believes the growing passenger numbers reinforces the Airport’s new owners’ opinion, that London City Airport has an exciting growth potential: “2006 has been an excellent year for London City Airport, the route network has grown from 26 destinations to 31 with recent route launches to Milan, Madrid, Hamburg, Nuremberg and Groningen. In early November we reached the 2 million passenger milestone in a calendar year for the first time, we are expecting to reach 2.4 million in total by the year end.”
The recent sale demonstrates the true value of our business. The new owners will be looking to drive our development plans forward in order to maximise the potential of the investment.
Richard continues: “Looking ahead we are confident that in 2007 passenger numbers will continue to grow, we are forecasting an additional growth of 10%. In order to grow and maximise the potential of the Airport, our immediate and longer-term plans will be to increase capacity.
That means north of 2.6m pax in 2007
Yesterday evening, Thursday 7 December 2006, London City Airport was voted the UK’s Best Regional Airport by the readers of Buying Business Travel.
Commenting on this accolade, Charles Buchanan, Business Development Director for London City Airport said: “We are thrilled and honoured to receive such recognition from the business community.
“2006 has been a very good year for the Airport. Passenger numbers have increased by 20% and yesterday was actually our busiest day since the Airport opened in 1987, with 10,530 passengers travelling via the Airport. It has also been a year since the London City Airport Docklands Light Railway (DLR) Extension opened, which put us firmly on the public transport map. Passenger usage of the DLR has exceeded all expectations.”
Finally, I note that route survey section currently contains
# Barcelona
# Helsinki
# Rome
# Vienna
With Rome about to start by AirOne, I guess that VIE, BCN and HEL are rather safe bets as the first new destinations for BA Cityflyer. If so, Star A* might consider putting their own metal on a VIE service.