Bdaily meets Newcastle International Airport chief, David Laws | Bdaily Business News
back in October 2012, Australian private equity firm AMP acquired a 49% stake in the airport and David says the new shareholders are now fully integrated into operations and strategic direction.
David adds: “The bad weather made for a difficult start to the year, but in subsequent months we’ve seen some year-on-year growth. In May we saw just over 4.2% growth and in June we finished about 2% up. Now we’re into the busy summer period.
“There’s been a few challenges too. Flybe sold their slots into Gatwick so now we’re in discussion with easyJet who bought them. That’s a really important route for us and hopefully we will be able to convince easyJet that it’s the right thing to do,” adds David.
He continues: “Even during the hard times of the last five years we’ve been able to keep our market roughly the same. I’ve just looked at our scheduled international passengers for the last week and it’s 6% growth, year-on-year. That represents some significant growth with the likes of Air France-KLM and Emirates.
“This year we’ve had the benefit of the bigger aircraft from Emirates that just keeps breaking passenger records every month. That route has done so much for the region - business have been created as a result of it.
“At the moment the record is about 9,960 passengers in a month, but in July there’s a possibility that we could reach the 10,000 mark.”