Teesside-2

[N707ZS]

There is still a public voted best airport to come, see who wins that one. At the end of the day it gets the public interested in the airport.

We don't here how the various franchises are doing within the terminal.

[highwideandugly]

Another interesting point for the NE airports…how the forthcoming Amsterdam reduced slots policy will impact?

I suppose Teesside,Newcastle,Humberside and Leeds being technically so close together .almost duplicating each others services..will be on the KLM management’s (money men’s) radar for reductions?

Guess Edinburgh and Glasgow market is so big..they won’t be affected?
Manchester and Birmingham likewise?

[SWBKCB]

I think there is a lot of water to go under the bridge before there is any impact. And remember, KLM have been a constant at MME - they aren't doing it as a charity job

[Flying Hi]

Originally Posted by highwideandugly

Another interesting point for the NE airports…how the forthcoming Amsterdam reduced slots policy will impact?

I suppose Teesside,Newcastle,Humberside and Leeds being technically so close together .almost duplicating each others services..will be on the KLM management’s (money men’s) radar for reductions?

Guess Edinburgh and Glasgow market is so big..they won’t be affected?
Manchester and Birmingham likewise?

LBA and NCL 'technicaly' close? Enoy the technically horrible drive between the two up hideous A1M
Worse still would be HUY to NCL.
I think LBA snd HUY would serve different catchment area.

[ATNotts]

Originally Posted by Flying Hi

LBA and NCL 'technicaly' close? Enoy the technically horrible drive between the two up hideous A1M
Worse still would be HUY to NCL.
I think LBA snd HUY would serve different catchment area.

Technically they are close. Practically, as you say, they are not.

Given decent surface infrastructure the case for 'minor' commercial airports may be further diminshed. Fortunately for the like of MME infrastructure is rubbish!

[pug]

Originally Posted by Flying Hi

LBA and NCL 'technicaly' close? Enoy the technically horrible drive between the two up hideous A1M
Worse still would be HUY to NCL.
I think LBA snd HUY would serve different catchment area.

HUY serves the offshore and petro-chemical industry, similarly MME does too. I was always of the understanding that these airports and NWI are relatively low cost due to the ability to just drop in out of the airways and they are legacies of Air Anglia/Air Yuk having been operated constantly for around 50 years, it also probably explains why bigger markets like EMA and LPL were dropped relatively swiftly.

Still, the ongoing slot issues at AMS will undoubtedly have an impact in some way on the regional routes, don’t see any other operator being quite as committed to the U.K. regions.

[Cautious Optimist]

Originally Posted by highwideandugly

Cautious..first hand experience of queuing in the rain waiting to get into Immigration..
There have been numerous Facebook remarks on this. Even Ben has stated work needs doing to improve this side of the airport.

How often do you fly? It's a rarity for pax to be queuing outside the door, let alone outside the door in the rain. When they do it's more likely because people have tampered with the barriers and not skirted around the full setup. Agree covered walk-way is necessary but this is largely a non-issue

[Cautious Optimist]

I was reading on here the environmentalist party who run the Dutch government are expected to be voted out next month, at that point could the slot restrictions be reversed?

[pug]

Originally Posted by Cautious Optimist

I was reading on here the environmentalist party who run the Dutch government are expected to be voted out next month, at that point could the slot restrictions be reversed?

Didnt know that, hopefully yes. I think their whole operation is built upon hub and spoke for seamless connections and therefore rely on their supposedly high yielding regional connectivity to enable the sheer range of long haul options on offer. Take one away and the other would struggle in my opinion.

[P330]

"A Bit of Balance"

Let me try and interject on a few things - some quite interesting comments these last few days..

But at what cost? ABZ/AMS could have continued with minimum changes to the terminal. 'Global connectivity' hasn't improved. The terminal changes must have been aimed at the likes of RYR/TUI but they seem to be operating at a minimum level to satisfy their contracts. If the much flagged new services are the expected RYR TFS/AGP a couple of times a week, it starts to look like a 'cheap holidays for local people' exercise.

Global connectivity hasn't improved, in fact arguably it is worse than before the current ownership. We used to have 3-4x Aberdeen a day and Amsterdam used to be a more reliable a x3 daily. Arguably, not much worse today than then, but certainly not better. The comment about the terminal changes being aimed at leisure is interesting, because it was clear from Houchen at the outset that buying the airport wasn't about bucket and spade flights, it was about new business connectivity. Any leisure flights were to be a bonus. To be fair, the owners tried:

London City - Started/Gone
London Heathrow - Started/Gone
Newquay - Started/Gone
Bristol - Started/Gone
Belfast - Started/Gone
Dublin - Started/Gone
Souuthampton - Started/Gone
Isle of Man - Didn't even start

But despite trying, every single route failed (and we can argue about Covid, routes not given enough time etc...) but the reality is every single one failed. And we end up back where we are.

So, it seems clear to be me that whilst there maybe a desire to get such routes back, if passengers numbers are to grow, the airport must focus on leisure - which was never the original intention. That isn't a bad thing, but that then brings about the point about "at what cost". Lots of money has been spent to develop what is a growing leisure airport.

I don't see this as a major problem, but it would help if politicians were honest. Wouldn't it be great if they said "you know what, we tried, we failed, but guess what...this side of things is growing much more now and this is now our focus" instead of the constant pretence that everything is working as it should.

We have previously seen attempts to deflect attention from the poor passenger numbers by introducing movements. The Business Plan that was used to explain and justify the huge tax payer investment did not do so on the basis that the number on light aircraft going round and round in the circuit would be maintained. In fact has the airport not discouraged the tiddlers?

The Business Plan predicted a 10 fold increase in passenger numbers by now. As Covid is now behind us it would be nice if the mayor or others would explain what went wrong.

Exactly. Owners being accountable and explaining things properly would stop a lot of noise.

Originally Posted by highwideandugly
Poor arrival experiences (see Facebook)

I suspect factually correct, but lets look at it in the round. The experience is no worse than it has ever been. And people will always find something to moan about. We live in a world of keyboard warriors who like to vent. OT, but I landed at NCL at 2am a few weeks ago and it took nearly an hour for a bus to arrive to deplane us despite us being 2 minutes walk to the terminal. Lots of tired and grumpy people. Was it great? No. I just sat back in my chair for another wee while and ignored the moans. Its a wonder what a deep intake of breath will do for stress levels. Far more important things to complain about in this world....

Looking at the winter timetable on the Teesside Movements website, the only difference to the Peel era is three flights a week to Alicante. Surely flights are the reason for an airport?

Yes and no. Lets not forget the airport was acquired to build cargo, a business park and jobs. And it is. We're in a hugely better position than we were under Peel. Is it perfect? No. Will we ever see multiple winter movements a day with NCL/LBA close by? Probably not.

From an outside view it sounds a complete joke but from an insider's view you have to ask yourself. Do you actually take these sort of surveys seriously?

Obviously having that so called title is good news for Teesside and the mayor and the local population will rejoice in it. But come on in all reality and if I can make that quote from John McEnro "you can't be serious!"

So what? We all know lots of awards include some internal push for them, paid or otherwise. That's life. But isn't winning an award better than not winning?

Remember folks - the airport is in a far better place than it has been in the last 15 years. And the direction of travel is great.

[pug]

Originally Posted by P330

Let me try and interject on a few things - some quite interesting comments these last few days..



Global connectivity hasn't improved, in fact arguably it is worse than before the current ownership. We used to have 3-4x Aberdeen a day and Amsterdam used to be a more reliable a x3 daily. Arguably, not much worse today than then, but certainly not better. The comment about the terminal changes being aimed at leisure is interesting, because it was clear from Houchen at the outset that buying the airport wasn't about bucket and spade flights, it was about new business connectivity. Any leisure flights were to be a bonus. To be fair, the owners tried:

London City - Started/Gone
London Heathrow - Started/Gone
Newquay - Started/Gone
Bristol - Started/Gone
Belfast - Started/Gone
Dublin - Started/Gone
Souuthampton - Started/Gone
Isle of Man - Didn't even start

But despite trying, every single route failed (and we can argue about Covid, routes not given enough time etc...) but the reality is every single one failed. And we end up back where we are.

So, it seems clear to be me that whilst there maybe a desire to get such routes back, if passengers numbers are to grow, the airport must focus on leisure - which was never the original intention. That isn't a bad thing, but that then brings about the point about "at what cost". Lots of money has been spent to develop what is a growing leisure airport.

I don't see this as a major problem, but it would help if politicians were honest. Wouldn't it be great if they said "you know what, we tried, we failed, but guess what...this side of things is growing much more now and this is now our focus" instead of the constant pretence that everything is working as it should.



Exactly. Owners being accountable and explaining things properly would stop a lot of noise.



I suspect factually correct, but lets look at it in the round. The experience is no worse than it has ever been. And people will always find something to moan about. We live in a world of keyboard warriors who like to vent. OT, but I landed at NCL at 2am a few weeks ago and it took nearly an hour for a bus to arrive to deplane us despite us being 2 minutes walk to the terminal. Lots of tired and grumpy people. Was it great? No. I just sat back in my chair for another wee while and ignored the moans. Its a wonder what a deep intake of breath will do for stress levels. Far more important things to complain about in this world....


Yes and no. Lets not forget the airport was acquired to build cargo, a business park and jobs. And it is. We're in a hugely better position than we were under Peel. Is it perfect? No. Will we ever see multiple winter movements a day with NCL/LBA close by? Probably not.



So what? We all know lots of awards include some internal push for them, paid or otherwise. That's life. But isn't winning an award better than not winning?

Remember folks - the airport is in a far better place than it has been in the last 15 years. And the direction of travel is great.

A fair assessment I think. The question is, is it sustainable? Seems to me to be a playground for Ben Houchen and a useful political pawn (see also DSA!). It is getting investment, which is encouraging, but TUI have barely grown since returning. Ryanair may add the odd route possibly to be announced this month, but with bases at LBA and now NCL is there much scope for growth in that sector? How much is the revenue generated by the extra Ryanair and TUI movements contributing to overall profitability or is it, as I expect, widening losses? Is freight really seeing an upward trend? What is the breakdown of Commercial Air Transport vs puddle jumpers and light GA?

2Excel have now decamped which must be disappointing considering the promotion of the new hangars used pictures of their aircraft. Are there any tenants signed up to use them?

With regards to the economic benefit of a regional airport;

https://neweconomics.org/2023/07/boo...-or-gdp-growth

KLM must provide some return to the regional economy, but what else? And does it justify the millions in public funding?

[SWBKCB]

The comment about the terminal changes being aimed at leisure is interesting, because it was clear from Houchen at the outset that buying the airport wasn't about bucket and spade flights, it was about new business connectivity. Any leisure flights were to be a bonus.

I don't see this as a major problem, but it would help if politicians were honest.

Yes - we have to assume Houchen was being honest when he said it was about global connectivity, and not just about appealling to local voters.

To be fair, the owners tried:

London City - Started/Gone
London Heathrow - Started/Gone
Newquay - Started/Gone
Bristol - Started/Gone
Belfast - Started/Gone
Dublin - Started/Gone
Southampton - Started/Gone
Isle of Man - Didn't even start

How many of these did anybody really think were realistic, especially on the like of Loganair and Eastern? RYR may be able to make DUB work, but the rest?

Lets not forget the airport was acquired to build cargo, a business park and jobs.

Was it? Don't remember these being mentioned as a primary focus. If they were mentioned at alll, they were supporting functions to help return the airport to profitability

[SWBKCB]

Originally Posted by pug

A fair assessment I think. The question is, is it sustainable? Seems to me to be a playground for Ben Houchen and a useful political pawn (see also DSA!). It is getting investment, which is encouraging, but TUI have barely grown since returning. Ryanair may add the odd route possibly to be announced this month, but with bases at LBA and now NCL is there much scope for growth in that sector? How much is the revenue generated by the extra Ryanair and TUI movements contributing to overall profitability or is it, as I expect, widening losses? Is freight really seeing an upward trend? What is the breakdown of Commercial Air Transport vs puddle jumpers and light GA?

2Excel have now decamped which must be disappointing considering the promotion of the new hangars used pictures of their aircraft. Are there any tenants signed up to use them?

With regards to the economic benefit of a regional airport;

KLM must provide some return to the regional economy, but what else? And does it justify the millions in public funding?

Our comments crossed - I certainly think the airport is sustainable, but as an aviation focused business park with a runway in the middle of it. The things being done are the right things but in the wrong order and priority. Assuming there is a market for the business park, that should have been the initial project, building a solid base with Draken (whose expansion appears to have fallen into the airports lap) and the Willis village (who saw that coming?). The Terminal and Freight centre seem to have been developed on a "build it and they will come" basis, where as successful airports seem to get the business first and then scramble to cope while building the supporting infrastructure.

[pug]

Originally Posted by SWBKCB

Our comments crossed - I certainly think the airport is sustainable, but as an aviation focused business park with a runway in the middle of it. The things being done are the right things but in the wrong order and priority. Assuming there is a market for the business park, that should have been the initial project, building a solid base with Draken (whose expansion appears to have fallen into the airports lap) and the Willis village (who saw that coming?). The Terminal and Freight centre seem to have been developed on a "build it and they will come" basis, where as successful airports seem to get the business first and then scramble to cope while building the supporting infrastructure.

I think build it and they will come us a failed strategy, there is a reason why the successful airports don’t pursue such an investment strategy, more a case for the bigger players is build it because they said they’d come, or build it because it’s needed is the order of the day. I’m pretty certain that in the case of MME, they won’t come. Not in any scaleable or sustainable numbers anyway.

[P330]

Expanding a bit….

I think it’s clear that the original plan isn’t going according to plan. However, things are going well but maybe just differently to how was originally envisaged.

What would help is if an updated plan with refreshed numbers and a new narrative were made public. Within that, if there was a look back at what worked well and what hasn’t, that would be useful.

Problem is politicians don’t like admitting some things haven’t worked. Instead, they deflect to what is working. It turns people off politics and builds suspicion.

That said, let’s assume they’ve burnt more money than they would like and progress, although positive, is slower than originally thought….what could you do?

1). Sell up?
2). Admit defeat and run things down?
3). See that you’re making progress and keep going.

The only plausible option today is 3) both economically and politically. If they could do this with that honest, public update mentioned above, I’m sure most would be on board.

Now, if in 2 years time when the accounts reflect current non-Covid trading and if the numbers are going in the wrong direction and show no sign of getting to where they need to, then questions about continued use of the public purse are fair game.

[Harold77]

There has been a number of updates to the Business Plan since it was first created. The first update was after Covid hit as the scale of effects globally were starting to be known. It was said that the major effects of Covid would last for two years. The second update came the following year as things started to open up. Another came a year later due to length of time that global restrictions were taking to ease. Think updated Business Plan coming out of Covid had 2022 down for 147k passengers as base year (was mentioned on one of Mayors posts)

February 2019 TVCA purchase airport from Peel.
£35m purchase airport.
£5m for land parcel that was sold to house builders.
Total £40m


What I was able to work out August 2021
£3.5m radar upgrades
£1m security upgrade
£3m terminal refurbishment and upgrades.

Then we had new Draken hangar built, office block on side of terminal and skybar built, also the new luggage scanners.

From 2021-2022 Accounts.
£34.4m draw down loan facility for ongoing operations and investments available to 2029, this boosted by £20m to £54m.
£23.6m draw down loan facility for Southside Business Park.

£44m (combined) drawn down so far as of 31st March 2022 from an available £77m loan facility.


Jan 2023 £7m for Hangar and infrastructure from Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).

Financial Years / Passengers / Movements / Revenues / Loss/Profit
2022-23 / 192,283 / 21,360 /
2021-22 / 83,921 / 20,130 / £7,686,643 / -£11,882,689
2020-21 / 14,521 / 11,118 / £4,812,505 / -£13,632,028
2019-20 / 139,448 / 16,389 / £7,745,305 / -£1,737,251
2018-19 / 137,689 / 17,062 / £7,557,879 / -£5,725,046
2017-18 / 131,745 / 21,848 / £5,656,210 / -£2,620,225
2016-17 / 125,556 / 21,360 / £5,396,735 / -£2,732,790

So the increase in business compared to the first year (2019-20) of operation is significant, so is going to show pretty good revenue level for the 2022-23 when the results are revealed. So if you can read between the lines, you could work out what sort of revenue can be seen for 22-23.

So the important things to take from this is
Passengers increasing.
Aircraft Movements increasing.
Fuelling increasing.
Businesses increasing.
Revenues increasing.

Covid has took a huge amount out of the global aviation industry and is taking longer to get back to pre covid levels. Many airports are still down on pre covid levels, whereas Teesside has been steaming ahead since April 2022.

If covid hadn't hit then we would be further forward with passenger and flight numbers as the new routes would have bedded in, grew and expanded.

One thing to remember is the massive backlog in new aircraft from manufacturers to operators has made expansion plans that bit more of a headache. As having to juggle about older aircraft leaving from fleets and new aircraft not yet delivered is causing holes in timetables that need filling or cut temporarily. It is not as easy as saying why not keep the older aircraft from leaving fleet until new aircraft are delivered. Many of the older aircraft leaving are due big costly exams, so the hours left to fill the gap doesn't make paying for the exams economical before being removed.

[P330]

Thanks for the detailed insight Harold.

Do the updated plans give revised passenger/revenue/profit projections?

[Grumpy1]

Some very insightful and sensible reviews of the current situation that can perhaps be summarised as we had a go but it didn't quite work out but it was worth a try. Harold tells us that there have been revisised and presumably updated business plans and I assume that they are publicly available so the links would be helpful.
Harold's analysis of the data shows that progress has stalled with no obvious way of increasing passenger revenue unless we get new routes/destinations urgently. This month we do have the mayors promised big announcement of the deals that he has already done so fingers crossed.
The airport continues to loose about a million pounds per month and politically, not sure how long this can continue especially if there is a change of government next year or a change of mayor sooner.

[SWBKCB]

as we had a go but it didn't quite work out but it was worth a try.

Bit harsh - there have been investments made that haven't started to pay back yet.

I'd say route growth has stalled - pax numbers will plateau next year without new routes. Question is, has MME now reached it's natural level in terms of pax numbers? If so, it will need the 'industrial airport' investments to become profitable (Willis, Draken, business park, new hangars)

​​​​​​​

[pug]

Originally Posted by SWBKCB

Bit harsh - there have been investments made that haven't started to pay back yet.

I'd say route growth has stalled - pax numbers will plateau next year without new routes. Question is, has MME now reached it's natural level in terms of pax numbers? If so, it will need the 'industrial airport' investments to become profitable (Willis, Draken, business park, new hangars)

I agree, as is the case with most small airports it will need the other aviation (and non aviation) revenues to cover the costs of handling the passenger operation, which hopefully it will. I’d be interested to know who Harold 77 is referring to when he claims that airlines are struggling due to a backlog of orders? It’s funny how airlines tend to be able to source aircraft when they are pursuing growth, not really a reason why MME hasn’t announced new airline operators, it’s more because they aren’t interested. Maybe more from Ryanair this month though.