They are medical flights. Dont start the BFS Fanclub off about ezy at LDY!

Cheers D-I-P.

Ha! Yeah, they're a touchy lot really. Understandable when you see the airport they're championing!

December provisional stats are now out. As expected, the weather hammered all airports across the UK.

For LDY:

Total flight: 253, -20.2%

Pax: 21413, -10.7%

Routes:

BHX: 3570, -1%

DUB: 491, -72%

LPL: 6018, -4%

PIK: 4449, -14%

STN: 6977, +42%

A mixed bag, and it's not possible to break down the above into LFs as I have no idea how many of each flight was cancelled.

Suffice to say the average pax/flight of ~85 is much improved on last December's 50.8.

Cheers!

Derry-Dublin route
 

Did I read N Dempsey TD right- "Alternatives to air services, specifically travel by rail and road, have greatly improved since the Regional Airports Programme began, particularly with Government investment under Transport 21 in recent years". Did we get a new road to Monaghan and a new High Speed rail connection that I missed.!!! Better get my tablets changed. That aside, if a Derry-Dublin link is to work (and I'm not sure that it is financially feasibly at all ) it would need to be a lot more reliable than the current service.

Thanks CU as always for the details of last month.

Do you know what the annual passenger number was?

As for Dublin, will we really miss those passengers... I doubt it.

Cheers

Hi Northern, the (provisional) total for the year is 334,226. You could probably add another 20-40k to this had it not been for the volcanic ash disruption, and also severe weather in January, November and December.

DCD, I was thinking that myself. Out of all the airports across Ireland, LDY probably has the worst road connections to Dublin, with little or no improvement over the last 5-10 years. Having said that, the recently sporadic, poorly timed offering of RE really wasn't pulling in the punters (probably because of the sporadic poorly timed nature of the service!!).

LDY 29th UK Airport
 

As predicted City of Derry ended up as the 29th largest airport in the UK with 338,505 passengers in 2010, a drop of 2.1% on 2009 but not a bad result considering volcanic ash clouds and bad weather in January and December. Norwich was 28th with less passengers than LDY had at its peak in 2008. Humberside, Newquay, Blackpool and Durham were far behind.

At a 2.1% drop for the year, it looks like LDY has stablised and may even see an increase in passenger numbers in 2011 not withstanding the possible loss of Dublin and Alicante. In terms of percentage change LDY ranks at 18th best performing, with only Leeds, Belfast City, Liverpool and Doncaster showing any real growth (and of those, Belfast may not for 2011 following the loss of Ryanair).

Flights were down 8% so a 2% passenger decrease shows a loading increase which hopefully may see increased frequencies next year.

Still a long way to go though to the 1 million passengers by 2010 predicted some years ago by the council. (Though in 2008 prior to the credit crunch I recall it did look possible).

The plot thickens . . .
 

The Wikipedia article on City of Derry Airport states that Alicante will run from June to September. It will apparently be re-announced in a few weeks time along with a new route to Malaga!

OK, so anyone can edit Wikipedia and a rumour there is no more reliable than a rumour here (infact probably less given that you don't even have to register there to contribute) but someone did take the time to edit the article and were quite specific about their claims.

City of Derry Airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Could they be in the know? Does anyone know? Is there anything to know?

I hope all this is true. AGP would be a great addition. Hopefully they will have at least 2 x weekly rotations as well. Lets not get our holiday hats on just yet until its 100% on the booking system.

If AGP was announced from Derry then what hope does ALC have, with Faro and Malaga then Alicante would come under even more pressure this year.

For AGP to operate LDY it would require more aircraft to be based in AGP as the current ones are very full and couldn't see them squeesing in LDY.

The article says:

Which isn't the same as saying:

We'll see what happens.

There is NO good reason why a selection of sun routes wouldn't be successful from LDY. At the end of the day, where does BFS get the majority of its traffic from? Population stats would suggest 60% from the east of the Bann and the rest from the west of the Bann. Why can't LDY win some of these pax? Look at Knock for God's sake (if you excuse the semi-pun).

Anyway, a while back Wikipedia was saying BFS were about to have EI routes to KJFK, KBOS and KORD. These rumours were rubbish.

A waiting game is required.

Also, Amelia, where did you get your total for 2010 from? Not the CAA website I'm guessing?

Knock may of got 3 weekly to the Canary Islands but Faro has being cut by 1 weekly flight for the monthes of July and August.

I know what i'd rather have....

There ain't no point having a facility that looks like " a proper little Airport" if it sits there without any aeroplanes for the majority of the day.

I'll say it again, well done to the management at Knock ! Remember, they don't even have a City on their doorstep.:ugh:

LDY 2010 stats
 

Good morning all,

Here are the LDY 2010 figures from the CAA data (using provisional data, so these numbers could be subject to minor changes).

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/508/ldyy.jpg

Here are the average flown load factors for the individual FR routes (2009 values in brackets):

FAO 79% (-)
STN 76% (72%)
ALC 75% (84%)
LPL 66% (62%)
BHX 65% (56%)
PIK 56% (57%)
LTN 47% (56%)

Anna_List, brilliant stuff as always. It does highlight the issues at CODA nicely.

Many thanks!

Alpha, perhaps you should get a new username with the initials E I K N!!

Joking aside, I agree with you. Knock have done a brilliant job, and a few lessons could be learnt by the people at CODA.

One would imagine having "a proper little airport" is much more attractive to potential users than a sh%t-hole that gets closed down by the authority overseeing aviation in the UK, because management (for whatever reason) allowed it to fall into such a state of disrepair that it was deemed dangerous.

The difference between Derry and Knock is mainly down to the €10 passenger charge at Knock. The funding from this has helped to improve the airport but also the route network by reducing charges for airlines.

So my question for the LDY guys is this - would you accept the imposition of a €10/£8 departure charge for all passengers over 12 years of age in return for an expanded route network equivalent to that at Knock this coming year (16 scheduled international destinations)? Would the general public in the area buy into the potential benefits of imposing the charge?

In the west the Knock charge is generally accepted due to the cost of travelling to Shannon or Dublin (far more than €10) and the expansion that has been seen up at the airport in terms of facilities and routes. However i do know of some who refuse to use the airport because of the charge and go elsewhere.

Over the last 2 weeks Ryanair have pulled out of two other UK airports because of ADF (one was only €6). If LDY introduced one then FR would want to land for practically free. They must be getting very very low landing fees at Knock or they wouldn't stay but part of the reason for staying could be to spite SNN which has backfired on a number of routes.

Quato They must be getting very very low landing fees at Knock or they wouldn't stay but part of the reason for staying could be to spite SNN which has backfired on a number of routes.

When ryanair started in Knock they use to pay £2.50 or €3.17 for the first 60000 pax on each route and it was free after that each year. Ml o'leary met with the knock team and agree with the then £6.00. €7.62 dep tax but reduce stansted to one daily for that year:ok:

Thanks CU for the figures!

Strong growth on last year for a majority of the routes. Do we know why B'ham fell this year?

Obviously there are 60,000 passengers being lost due to Ryanair's apprehension to operating a second Stansted flight!

One possible hope for Derry is that after the Road Cuts of yesterday, the A5 has been saved in favour of the A6 improvements (which has been postponed until 2015 - preconstruction work is to continue though). This should help improve LDY sphere of influence to the likes of Omagh and perhaps as far a field as Monaghan.

My hope for 2011 is that Ryanair announces a second flight to Stansted. Flybe come on board with at least two routes. We see the return of Alicante and possible addition of Malaga. (However, I'd prefer Ibiza or the Canaries as they would be bolstered by Teenage getaways.) If this happened, and yes I'm being optimistic, we could easily see Annual Pax at 500k+ next year.

I still believe that with the right routes in the future, LDY could easily sustain 1 Million... Time will tell though.

Lost!

Anyway I made it clear that I was reporting mere rumours and speculation from Wikipedia which after all, as I stated, anybody can edit. Nevertheless a rumour ciruclated there is as useful as a rumour circulated here. It's whether the rumour has any basis in fact and makes any sense that one must try to decypher.

As to routes, there is no reason that additional routes could not work from LDY. ALC has approximately 100K pax from NI each year, FAO 130K and AGP 190K. This would indicated that LDY could sustain a new route to there.

The new routes would follow the same pattern as ALC: first year passenger numbers bolstered by those looking for something new, second year settling down as an established route used mostly by those with a reason or genuine interest in going including some who had already booked from other airports in the first year prior to the route's announcement. Accordingly FAO may have lower demand this year than last particularly if a new route is announced but ALC should have similar numbers in its third year to its second.

Palma, Paris and Amsterdam (or Eindhoven with Ryanair) would also work at approximately 140K pax p.a. each from NI with Barcelona on 120K and Lanzarote and Tenerife at about 90K each.