Long haul
Taking up a couple of LEEDS APPROACH's points, BRS would certainly be even more successful with a larger and better sited airfield. The numbers that pack through the airport despite its physical limitations and challenging surface connectivity are testimony to this. However, it’s highly unlikely that a runway extension will be built. I set out the airport’s current thinking on this in #2912 on 4 April.
BRS does have some parallels with LBA, apart from physical ones, in that it also loses a lot of potential passengers from its catchment to a larger airport (LHR) which, from some areas of Greater Bristol, is no more than 75 minutes along the M4. CAA surveys in recent years consistently show that over five million people from the South West use the London airports annually, mainly LHR. However, much of this is inevitable as BRS, even if it was physically larger, could never offer the range and frequency of flights, especially long haul, that LHR enjoys. BHX is also a useful alternative with airports at Cardiff, Exeter and even Southampton and Bournemouth (for certain outer parts of the BRS core catchment) available as well.
Ryanair
Ryanair has announced its winter 2016-2017 schedules from BRS. There will be 18 destinations, three more than last winter with 68 weekly rotations, an increase of 24%. Treviso, Krakow and Bergamo will be new for this winter. Treviso has previously been a summer-only route but extending it to winter may be a response to easyJet who restarted Venice MP this spring after a number of dormant years on the route, and it too will operate through next winter. Ryanair has just commenced Krakow against the long established easyJet route and both will operate next winter. Bergamo used to be year round but has been summer-only in recent years.
Alicante, Malaga, Faro, Lanzarote and Warsaw Modlin will all see extra frequency next winter, with the latter’s 4 x weekly possibly a look towards Wizz Air’s Warsaw Chopin that begins next month and will continue thorough next winter.
Ryanair has continued to add frequency for this summer which on average will see 13 additional rotations each week compared with last summer, an increase of over 12%.
easyJet
Having announced some time ago that they will be basing an additional Airbus (the 13th) at BRS for the main part of this summer easyJet has recently revealed its winter 2016-2017 programme. Routes extended into winter for the first time are Bordeaux and Bilbao, with increased frequencies on half a dozen other routes.
Airport Growth
BRS enjoyed another excellent month in March with CAA stats showing that 511,153 passengers used the airport, an increase of 14.2%. This brought the 12-month rolling total to 6,949,057. This means that in the first three months of this year nearly 168,000 more passengers passed through the airport than in the same period in 2015 which itself saw the passenger total for the calendar year as a whole grow by over 7% with nearly 450,000 more passengers than in 2014.
If the first three months of this year are replicated throughout the year the airport would find itself with around 7.45 million passengers at the end of 2016. However, it’s unlikely that growth will be sustained at this level throughout the year although a total of 7 million passengers should be exceeded comfortably.