Teesside-2

[davidjohnson6]

Originally Posted by GAXLN

The operating loss was a mere £338 per departing passenger.

Even by PSO standards, that makes for a very large Govt subsidy... especially so as Teesside is neither an offshore island nor a remote outlying area

[SWBKCB]

There have been assurances given that flights are not being subsidised. The support is for the re-development of the airport, which was needed because it was comimg from a very low base.

[SKOJB]

Domestic traffic was never going to work for long, just isn’t the footfall nor surface infrastructure with NCL up the road. Best bet is to attract a few more bucket and spade routes!

[davidjohnson6]

Originally Posted by SKOJB

Domestic traffic was never going to work for long, just isn’t the footfall nor surface infrastructure with NCL up the road. Best bet is to attract a few more bucket and spade routes!

If MME is to be for bucket-and-spade routes - i.e. for boosting the Bulgarian, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish economies, not the economy of Teesside... then why does it need such an enormous amount of Govt money and to be in state ownership ?
And no, there is no need to spend tens of millions of pounds just to employ a modest number of people at the airport and at a few TUI shops. If you want to have a make-work scheme, there are other ways which would give greater economic benefits
Teesside desperately needs investment to boost its economy... but much of it is being wasted so the wealthier people in the region can go to the beach without having to drive for an hour up the A1 / A19

[SWBKCB]

The airport isn't just about passenger flights but cargo, special missions for the MOD, MRO/breaking, fire school and industrial usage. There's also KLM to AMS giving the much vaunted 'global connectivity'. Will also be interesting to see what freeport status brings.

Clearly there has been an attempt to attract a wider range of flights and today's news is another disappointment, but investing to bring in/retain good quality, skilled jobs and diversify the airports income streams isn't a bad idea.

[SKOJB]

Originally Posted by davidjohnson6

If MME is to be for bucket-and-spade routes - i.e. for boosting the Bulgarian, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish economies, not the economy of Teesside... then why does it need such an enormous amount of Govt money and to be in state ownership ?
And no, there is no need to spend tens of millions of pounds just to employ a modest number of people at the airport and at a few TUI shops. If you want to have a make-work scheme, there are other ways which would give greater economic benefits
Teesside desperately needs investment to boost its economy... but it's all being wasted so the wealthier people in the region can go to the beach without having to drive for an hour up the A1 / A19

Totally agree and seems it’s only being propped up by tax payers money. Once that falls it could become another DSA

[pug]

Originally Posted by davidjohnson6

If MME is to be for bucket-and-spade routes - i.e. for boosting the Bulgarian, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish economies, not the economy of Teesside... then why does it need such an enormous amount of Govt money and to be in state ownership ?
And no, there is no need to spend tens of millions of pounds just to employ a modest number of people at the airport and at a few TUI shops. If you want to have a make-work scheme, there are other ways which would give greater economic benefits
Teesside desperately needs investment to boost its economy... but it's all being wasted so the wealthier people in the region can go to the beach without having to drive for an hour up the A1 / A19

If it can become profitable by sustainably growing its bucket and spade routes then i don’t see what the problem is?

I think the problem for the airport is that there is such a mistrust of Peel to the point where people think they purposefully ran it into the ground (as with DSA too). They didn’t, they just went down the low-cost route which ultimately didn’t work.

People often compare Teesside with Humberside, and in many ways they are similar. Difference is though that Humberside have shored up their main focus (helicopters) and seemingly been unwilling to bend over backwards to encourage passenger flights that may end up costing the airport to host, it is profitable still despite a significant reduction in passenger throughput since its peak in the mid 2000’s. Perhaps the answer here is for Teesside to be realistic in what they can hope to attract and sustain, and manage the operation to that? Let’s face it, it is in between NCL and LBA who have the lions share of the market anyway. KLM seem happy there, that provides a service to the region, there are the non passenger businesses on site too. It needs to find its strength and play to it rather than pretend it’s going to be something it’s not, as that’s where public money will be squandered. If it can sustainably attract more from Ryanair and TUI without costing the airport money then that should be supported, but I tend to agree with you in that it would appear at the moment to be the mayors vanity project - the public won’t be too interested if they show they are merely focussing on non passenger based aviation revenues.

[SWBKCB]

The Mayor has a significant democratic mandate to do what he is doing, I've argued in this thread about the way some things have been done, but what is being attempted at the airport isn't unreasonable. There is a costed masterplan to return the airport to profit, and it could be argued that without covid it would be on track

[davidjohnson6]

Yes, the mayor was given a democratic mandate to try to boost the airport.... but the voters expect him to do so within reason. He's tried... he's spent a lot of money... and there's not a lot to show for it.
Projects which involve spending money need a regular review (e.g. every 6 months or year), to evaluate current progress against previous expectations, see what the future prospects are, and evaluate if the money is being spent effectively or whether the future money can be spent in different ways to achieve better results

[SWBKCB]

Originally Posted by davidjohnson6

Yes, the mayor was given a democratic mandate to try to boost the airport.... but the voters expect him to do so within reason. He's tried... he's spent a lot of money... and there's not a lot to show for it.
Projects which involve spending money need a regular review (e.g. every 6 months or year), to evaluate current progress against previous expectations, see what the future prospects are, and evaluate if the money is being spent effectively or whether the future money can be spent in different ways to achieve better results

Thanks - I've read a few project management books in my time

You seem to be implying that this isn't happening? Is MME the only UK airport making a loss at the moment? A lot of money has been needed because of the previous under investment

[davidjohnson6]

After MME was run into the ground, there was a case for Houchen giving MME a big chance... I didn't think at the time it would work out, but the voters backed it, so it went ahead. Covid was deeply unfortunate for the project... but lockdown ended 18 months ago and Covid has ceased having a major impact on UK society for 12 months - plenty of time for any post-Covid latent demand to re-emerge. Loganair dropping routes is not meant to be happening - unless there is another airline about to take them over. KLM have been forced to go from 3x daily pre-Covid to 2x daily. Yes, KLM are selling 3x daily for S23 but with much of their short-haul network, they seem to be regularly putting lots of flights on sale, and then taking a knife to frequencies about 2 months before they will take place. AMS having its annual slots reduced permanently is not a good sign. Maybe with the World Cup, airlines have delayed announcing new routes.... but by 31-Jan-2023, it's time to take a big hard look at MME and decide whether profitability and being a local economy major boost is realistic. Zoom has arrived and is not going to disappear.... business travel has changed.
Middlesbrough, Stockton and the region has been largely forgotten by Westminster - the urban decay make me very sad.... I deeply want it to flourish again, but throwing such a large amount of budget in one direction just doesn't seem to be working.

I would love for Rishi Sunak to move half of HM Treasury to Darlington.. and for many of the civil servants to better factor the needs of the struggling regions into UK spending plans, instead of just seeing what's happening in Surrey. (Disclaimer - I spent some of my childhood in Surrey)
I would love for TVCA or Westminster to spend £10m+ on training hundreds of local people in strong IT skills - not just how to browse the web and send emails.... but to produce a sizeable workforce capable of writing complex software in C#, Java and Python, creating cloud-based applications and building new tech-driven companies. It's been happening in Belfast for some time... it can happen in Teesside as well.

[SWBKCB]

Again, you seem to be measuring the success of the airport on flights. And how many airports are back to pre-covid passenger levels?

[davidjohnson6]

I'm measuring the success of the airport partly on flights... but much more heavily on economic impact in the region. And I'm not seeing much of an economic boost from the airport since Houchen bought MME... the airport and all the public money involved just isn't doing as much for local jobs and the local economy as people hoped.
I'd like the public money to go instead on a very large amount of IT-skills training (serious heavy-duty IT skills, not just how to use Gmail) for the people of the region. And only people with local postcodes being eligible for the training. Teesside made its money from engineering... I want Teesside to make its future money from software engineering. Create a large number of skilled software developers in Teesside and companies will decide to start hiring in Teesside instead of London... and Teesside's economy will revive. The alternative is just a continuation of long-term regional decline.

[Beafer]

Looking at the Teesside airport accounts, and the lack of explanation regarding some items such as salaries. I think the current mayoral incumbent won't be in the seat after the next election.

The publics money seems to be spent like its confetti with little to show for it.

The Tees Works (Steel works site) was given away to a couple of business people, which was an eye opener!
https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/t...deals-22989843

https://find-and-update.company-info...51851/officers

More on the story about the transfer. Will they be waiting in the wings for the airport site? We shall see.
https://northeastbylines.co.uk/who-r...qual-partners/

Who is monitoring where the money's going.... apart from Private eye?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-57028650

[SWBKCB]

The guys behind Teesworks already have 50% of the southside - as I mentioned earlier, there are some things that don't sit comfortably. Similarly Grumpy1's comment about the increasing role of Willis.

Not sure where the concern on salaries comes from - think I worked it out at an average of £35k. Considering it will cover the paid directors and essential roles like ATC and fire and their shift allowances, doesn't seem that unreasonable?

Whether the money would be better spent elsewhere is something you could argue with any public infrastructure expenditure (give the HS2 money to the nurses anyone?).

Getting back to the airport, our Ben's argument is that without his public intervention the airport would have closed (not sure about that) and that it is needed for 'global connectivity' and as a stimulus to growth by attracting/retaining skilled, well paid jobs.

With regard to global connectivity the argument is that you won't get inward investment if you can't fly there - not sure about that either, but that's the argument. In my view, by keeping the airport open and retaining KLM, that's job done and anything else is just gravy. Disappointing that the regional routes tried by Eastern/Loganair haven't worked, but they've been given a go.

The jobs thing is about creating an industrial estate/business park with a runway in the middle - hardly an original idea. FR/Draken has been retained, and the airport has got lucky with their expansion. It's also good that a deal has been reached with the fire school. The other prospects look more flaky - will the Willis vision materialise, will they manage to grab DSA's freight traffic, will the long awaited southside amount to anything more than a row of 'big shed' warehousing, will the Freeport make any difference - who knows, grab your seat and some popcorn.

[Cautious Optimist]

The armchair experts are out in force today! Makes me ashamed I used to be one 15 or so years ago 🤦‍♂️

Anyway, those saying "told you so", no you didn't...there is sufficient demand for all of the regional connectivity services we have had within our catchment, demand has failed to materialise because it wasn't stimulated and not because it doesn't exist. We are absolutely not just a bucket and spade airport

[davidjohnson6]

I've stuck my head above the parapet, saying with my best intention and for the long-term benefit of the people of Teesside, what I think the TVCA mayor should do - and I'm happy to debate this further; I don't own a training company or have any obvious conflict of interest.
What would you propose instead ?

[JKKne]

Originally Posted by Cautious Optimist

The armchair experts are out in force today! Makes me ashamed I used to be one 15 or so years ago 🤦‍♂️

Anyway, those saying "told you so", no you didn't...there is sufficient demand for all of the regional connectivity services we have had within our catchment, demand has failed to materialise because it wasn't stimulated and not because it doesn't exist. We are absolutely not just a bucket and spade airport

So the demand is there....it's just not there, essentially?

I don't see what's wrong with being bucket and spade, branded correctly following what people want is a good thing. The biggest success stories are those who know the market and aren't ashamed by it. The likes of Primark et al. The vast majority of the catchment want Costas, they want bucket and spades and that's fine. If they want anything more they have Leeds and Newcastle plus Manchester in driveable distance. Teesside should go after the bucket brigade loud and proud

I'm not sure why we expect so much from an airport that only exists because there's a Mayor who would sell his grannies kidneys for publicity or are ashamed when it delivers what people want

[BA318]

Originally Posted by JKKne

So the demand is there....it's just not there, essentially?

I don't see what's wrong with being bucket and spade, branded correctly following what people want is a good thing. The biggest success stories are those who know the market and aren't ashamed by it. The likes of Primark et al. The vast majority of the catchment want Costas, they want bucket and spades and that's fine. If they want anything more they have Leeds and Newcastle plus Manchester in driveable distance. Teesside should go after the bucket brigade loud and proud

I'm not sure why we expect so much from an airport that only exists because there's a Mayor who would sell his grannies kidneys for publicity or are ashamed when it delivers what people want

Exactly. Even LCY gave up and let the bucket and spade travel in and now serves around the same number of holiday makers as business travellers. If the largest regional airline can’t make it work or doesn’t want to then you really have to question if the demand is there. If it costs millions to make an E145’s worth of passengers a day aware the route exists then it’s not going to work.

[Jamesair1]

I'm afraid that the regional services have fallen victim to the 'USE IT OR LOSE IT' syndrome.