DURHAM TEES VALLEY AIRPORT - 5
1500 jobs sounds an awful lot. Can anyone with good knowledge of the project (that means more than just read the local newspaper) comment on proposed job creation numbers and how these will be achieved ?
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Change the name again?
"Durham Tees Valley" has always struck me as a misleading name for Middleton St George, suggesting somewhere up in the hills near Barnard Castle, rather than industrial Tees-side.
Would a rebranding to "Middlesbrough International" or "Stockton and Darlington" attract more punters?
Would a rebranding to "Middlesbrough International" or "Stockton and Darlington" attract more punters?
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Newcastle Airport had 'Diverted to Teesside' on its screens yesterday.
The newly approved road upgrade of the Western Bypass will greatly improve things around the Metrocentre for travel to NCL which isn't the hardest to get to imo.
Metro is pretty hassle free
The newly approved road upgrade of the Western Bypass will greatly improve things around the Metrocentre for travel to NCL which isn't the hardest to get to imo.
Metro is pretty hassle free
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6 council time
Re "Would a rebranding to "Middlesbrough International" or "Stockton and Darlington" attract more punters? No"
How about turning the clock back to the pre Peel days of ten years ago and handing it all back to the 6 councils for the £500k peel paid for DTV.
Teesside as most people know it had survived since then 1940's untill peel got involved like the Sheffield Airport episode.
Whats the worst that could happen if the councils did take DTV back??
At least the public would still own an airport and ALL the land which might attract a few more operators if Peel were out of the picture.
I'm not anti Peel as a company as some may think, its just what they have done to a good regional airport which I've used for years.
Its been run into the ground.
As for the name rebranding how about good old Teesside
How about turning the clock back to the pre Peel days of ten years ago and handing it all back to the 6 councils for the £500k peel paid for DTV.
Teesside as most people know it had survived since then 1940's untill peel got involved like the Sheffield Airport episode.
Whats the worst that could happen if the councils did take DTV back??
At least the public would still own an airport and ALL the land which might attract a few more operators if Peel were out of the picture.
I'm not anti Peel as a company as some may think, its just what they have done to a good regional airport which I've used for years.
Its been run into the ground.
As for the name rebranding how about good old Teesside
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Teesside International Airport is the workable title. It gives the airport an immediate lift.
We can't put the clock back by saying they should never have changed the name but we can move it to a higher class.
We can't put the clock back by saying they should never have changed the name but we can move it to a higher class.
Last edited by Lancelot37; 6th Dec 2012 at 19:56.
Northbound - without wishing to be rude, you're suggestions are not evenly remotely likely to happen.
Peel is a private company. It is not going to surrender the airport for anything less than its current market value. Peel is a company run for profit for the benefit of the shareholders. The people who live nearby and the local Govt are utterly irrelevant in terms of in whose interest Peel acts. The main shareholders in Peel do not give a toss about people living anywhere nearby Middleton St George.
Teesside used to have a thriving commercial base, including manufacturing / heavy industry. Much of this has gone. Without this hive of commercial activity, there simply isn't the need for as many flights. China in the 1950s was run by Mao, followed by the cultural revolution. China has now woken up and makes goods more cheaply and more efficiently. China is not going to go away. Nor will India. Nor will Brazil. Globalisation has its winners and losers - places like Middlesbrough are in the group of losers.
Rebranding as Teesside will cost significant amounts of cash. The people who live near MME know all about the airport. How it's branded won't significantly change local knowledge. The purpose of the rebranding to DTV was to persuade people elsewhere to fly into DTV rather than NCL, simply because many of them had heard of Durham but had never heard of Teesside. Rebranding again from DTV to Teesside will cause plenty of confusion for people outside the UK but have very little benefit in bringing in more passengers. Why should Peel shareholders bear the monetary cost of rebranding again and also risk losing some passengers because of confusion over the name, just to warm the hearts of a few thousand people many of whom probably rarely fly out of MME anyway ? Remember - major shareholders in large companies do not care about nostalgia and people's sentiments like supporters of a football club - shareholders care only about risk, cash and profits.
Peel is a private company. It is not going to surrender the airport for anything less than its current market value. Peel is a company run for profit for the benefit of the shareholders. The people who live nearby and the local Govt are utterly irrelevant in terms of in whose interest Peel acts. The main shareholders in Peel do not give a toss about people living anywhere nearby Middleton St George.
Teesside used to have a thriving commercial base, including manufacturing / heavy industry. Much of this has gone. Without this hive of commercial activity, there simply isn't the need for as many flights. China in the 1950s was run by Mao, followed by the cultural revolution. China has now woken up and makes goods more cheaply and more efficiently. China is not going to go away. Nor will India. Nor will Brazil. Globalisation has its winners and losers - places like Middlesbrough are in the group of losers.
Rebranding as Teesside will cost significant amounts of cash. The people who live near MME know all about the airport. How it's branded won't significantly change local knowledge. The purpose of the rebranding to DTV was to persuade people elsewhere to fly into DTV rather than NCL, simply because many of them had heard of Durham but had never heard of Teesside. Rebranding again from DTV to Teesside will cause plenty of confusion for people outside the UK but have very little benefit in bringing in more passengers. Why should Peel shareholders bear the monetary cost of rebranding again and also risk losing some passengers because of confusion over the name, just to warm the hearts of a few thousand people many of whom probably rarely fly out of MME anyway ? Remember - major shareholders in large companies do not care about nostalgia and people's sentiments like supporters of a football club - shareholders care only about risk, cash and profits.
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There seems to be some confusion regarding the ownership of MME, so I'm going to try my best to explain things:
When Peel Airports Ltd first purchased the airport, they did so under the impression that DSA would not receive planning permission. When DSA did get the go-ahead, they changed their focus for MME from a commercially viable airport to a significant land development opportunity and as part of this ran the facility into the ground.
After several years of doing this, at some point they realised they couldn't achieve their goal for various reasons one of which was due to there being deeds on the land which specify it can only be used and developed for aviation-related purposes.
This is where Vancouver Airport Services came in, Peel decided to get shot and sought a partner to take a shareholding in their Airports division with the view to letting said partner take full control regardless of how much or little of the division they bought. Unfortunately for us, VAS only wanted Liverpool but they had to take us on along with DSA as part of the deal. So back to square one.
VAS then went about reducing the overheads at the airport which included making staff redundant with, on hindsight, no intention of developing the airport thereafter. Vancouver eventually decided to get rid and placed us up for sale.
Peel Airports Ltd running us into the ground damaged the reputation of the wider Peel group, contractors are/were reluctant to do business with them because of the way they treated us. The Chairman and majority owner of the top/main division Peel Holdings Plc, John Whittaker, decided the best way to reverse this was to buy back MME and try to build it back up again, so he did under a new Peel subsidiary and current owner Peel Investments (DTVA) Ltd.
The advantage we have now is we are much higher up the Peel tree than DSA and LPL. The active problem we have now though, is that Peel Airports Ltd are still dragging us down. When MME got rid of it's Information Desk, as well as various other services, they went to LPL, who charged us a fee at the smaller end of the five-figure range which was apparently cheaper than having it in-house. When the takeover went through, the
tripled this to the higher end of the five-figure range. Things like fire alarms and door control and electrics and all sorts of other utilities are operated by DSA and LPL and this is a big problem which "our" Peel are in the process of bringing back in-house. In short, we may now be separate to DSA and LPL, but they're still pulling our strings for a little while longer. This is where Andy Foulds and a new Property Director who has also joined the team come in, they're all part of a wider strategy to get MME back on it's own two feet.
If you look hard enough you can now see effort being put into the place. Back in the spring a six-figure fee was spent on revamping and repairing the terminal, anyone who's driven past Hangar One in the last few weeks will have seen the work being done on that, also six figures (they are also boasting about spending a large amount of money on a new X-Ray machine, but they were legally required to buy it and had no say in the matter so this doesn't count). Staff morale, which was at rock-bottom, is also on the rise and most significantly, airlines are said to be willing to talk to us again whereas when Peel approached them in the past, they simply didn't want to know. I've also heard a couple of reports that airlines have actually approached Peel first recently, rather than Peel going to them.
Nothing happens overnight in the airline industry as you all know, as DTVAirport mentioned you're looking at a couple of years rather than a couple of months before any new airlines and routes appear. But as we go back on the up again NCL heads in the opposite direction. OK fair enough we'll never ever overtake them, but look at the routes they've lost in recent times, look at the debt they're in, a debt that will get called in should there be another black Friday then they'd really be screwed.
There's a long road ahead but things are stabilizing.
When Peel Airports Ltd first purchased the airport, they did so under the impression that DSA would not receive planning permission. When DSA did get the go-ahead, they changed their focus for MME from a commercially viable airport to a significant land development opportunity and as part of this ran the facility into the ground.
After several years of doing this, at some point they realised they couldn't achieve their goal for various reasons one of which was due to there being deeds on the land which specify it can only be used and developed for aviation-related purposes.
This is where Vancouver Airport Services came in, Peel decided to get shot and sought a partner to take a shareholding in their Airports division with the view to letting said partner take full control regardless of how much or little of the division they bought. Unfortunately for us, VAS only wanted Liverpool but they had to take us on along with DSA as part of the deal. So back to square one.
VAS then went about reducing the overheads at the airport which included making staff redundant with, on hindsight, no intention of developing the airport thereafter. Vancouver eventually decided to get rid and placed us up for sale.
Peel Airports Ltd running us into the ground damaged the reputation of the wider Peel group, contractors are/were reluctant to do business with them because of the way they treated us. The Chairman and majority owner of the top/main division Peel Holdings Plc, John Whittaker, decided the best way to reverse this was to buy back MME and try to build it back up again, so he did under a new Peel subsidiary and current owner Peel Investments (DTVA) Ltd.
The advantage we have now is we are much higher up the Peel tree than DSA and LPL. The active problem we have now though, is that Peel Airports Ltd are still dragging us down. When MME got rid of it's Information Desk, as well as various other services, they went to LPL, who charged us a fee at the smaller end of the five-figure range which was apparently cheaper than having it in-house. When the takeover went through, the
tripled this to the higher end of the five-figure range. Things like fire alarms and door control and electrics and all sorts of other utilities are operated by DSA and LPL and this is a big problem which "our" Peel are in the process of bringing back in-house. In short, we may now be separate to DSA and LPL, but they're still pulling our strings for a little while longer. This is where Andy Foulds and a new Property Director who has also joined the team come in, they're all part of a wider strategy to get MME back on it's own two feet.If you look hard enough you can now see effort being put into the place. Back in the spring a six-figure fee was spent on revamping and repairing the terminal, anyone who's driven past Hangar One in the last few weeks will have seen the work being done on that, also six figures (they are also boasting about spending a large amount of money on a new X-Ray machine, but they were legally required to buy it and had no say in the matter so this doesn't count). Staff morale, which was at rock-bottom, is also on the rise and most significantly, airlines are said to be willing to talk to us again whereas when Peel approached them in the past, they simply didn't want to know. I've also heard a couple of reports that airlines have actually approached Peel first recently, rather than Peel going to them.
Nothing happens overnight in the airline industry as you all know, as DTVAirport mentioned you're looking at a couple of years rather than a couple of months before any new airlines and routes appear. But as we go back on the up again NCL heads in the opposite direction. OK fair enough we'll never ever overtake them, but look at the routes they've lost in recent times, look at the debt they're in, a debt that will get called in should there be another black Friday then they'd really be screwed.
There's a long road ahead but things are stabilizing.
But as we go back on the up again NCL heads in the opposite direction. OK fair enough we'll never ever overtake them, but look at the routes they've lost in recent times, look at the debt they're in, a debt that will get called in should there be another black Friday then they'd really be screwed.
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When DSA did get the go-ahead, they changed their focus for MME from a commercially viable airport to a significant land development opportunity and as part of this ran the facility into the ground.
Last edited by North West; 6th Dec 2012 at 21:38.
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North West - what you describe likely would have happened yes, but all that came three-four years after DSA got the go-ahead, so my comments still apply.
SWBKCB - It's true and obvious and you don't have to look very hard to see it. Looking at where you've listed as your location you were always going to react like that, regardless of right or wrong.
SWBKCB - It's true and obvious and you don't have to look very hard to see it. Looking at where you've listed as your location you were always going to react like that, regardless of right or wrong.
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Don't know the politics of, in the past, Wizz being offered preferential terms at DSA over MME, but in pure marketing terms, a lot of Poles live in Doncaster in particular, and South and West Yorkshire in general. And Wizz got in first before FR started competing from EMA and LBA. That's why I'm pleased a new agreement has been signed between Wizz and DSA, as I thought the competition may have diluted the market.
I have no idea how many Poles live in the MME catchment area, or the North-East generally, or if the competing airport at NCL offers flights, sorry.
I have no idea how many Poles live in the MME catchment area, or the North-East generally, or if the competing airport at NCL offers flights, sorry.
SWBKCB - It's true and obvious and you don't have to look very hard to see it. Looking at where you've listed as your location you were always going to react like that, regardless of right or wrong.
However, to say
as we go back on the up again NCL heads in the opposite direction
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OK I'm man enough to admit a couple of mistakes - firstly, yes MME has only stabilised and is not on the up, but based on what I've seen in recent months they soon will be.
As for NCL heading in the opposite direction, well, it's an accurate statement but it's putting it a bit strongly, yes they've lost a lot of route but it's less noticeable given their size to begin with.
Yes if you shut the airport all you've got is another industrial estate, but at the time when they were driving us into the ground, another industrial and/or housing estate was a plausible and commercially viable opportunity, luckily for MME, that changed very quickly!
As for NCL heading in the opposite direction, well, it's an accurate statement but it's putting it a bit strongly, yes they've lost a lot of route but it's less noticeable given their size to begin with.
Yes if you shut the airport all you've got is another industrial estate, but at the time when they were driving us into the ground, another industrial and/or housing estate was a plausible and commercially viable opportunity, luckily for MME, that changed very quickly!
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They weren't driving the airport into the ground.
You're someone looking for an elaborate conspirancy theory when the common sense explanation is staring you in the face. The catchment area is simply not strong enough to support profitable operations in the face of
1 pressure on employment and disposable incomes
2 APD
3 $1000 p/t fuel
4 lack of risk appetite and new start ups in the airline business becaue of 1,2, and 3
You're someone looking for an elaborate conspirancy theory when the common sense explanation is staring you in the face. The catchment area is simply not strong enough to support profitable operations in the face of
1 pressure on employment and disposable incomes
2 APD
3 $1000 p/t fuel
4 lack of risk appetite and new start ups in the airline business becaue of 1,2, and 3
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They were driving the airport into the ground because they even now admit it themselves. I wish you could do a poll on these threads, I'd like to know just how many people would vote for 'they were driving it into the ground' over 'they weren't' - a vast majority I'd bet.
I can assure you I'm not looking for a conspiracy theory as I hate them.
The points you raise make it very very difficult yes, but I don't believe for one second they mean the airport doesn't have a viable future.
I can assure you I'm not looking for a conspiracy theory as I hate them.
The points you raise make it very very difficult yes, but I don't believe for one second they mean the airport doesn't have a viable future.
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RR:
Really? So they invested all that money in buying the place off the MoD and putting the case for the airport together, in the expectation that it would get refused - and that they would also fail at any appeal? I don't think so!
NS
When Peel Airports Ltd first purchased the airport, they did so under the impression that DSA would not receive planning permission
NS
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DJ6... Teesside still is a massive manufacturing area contributing nearly 10% to the GDP of the UK. 90% of this is exported. Teesport is expanding every year and infrastructural development in the area has never been as busy despite the recession. I am not saying that this will have a direct effect on Teesside Airport but please give credit where it is due and do not class Teesside with many of the failing areas in the UK.