DURHAM Airport
 

Whilst our scheduled flights begin to thrive, our charter market has gone downhill.

MyTravel were about to base a second aircraft with us when suddenly they completely pulled out! Probably due to their financial troubles which they were suffering from at the time (also note the flight numbers they used from MME are now used at NCL)

Also, Air Europa no longer has any flights with us although they have returned for the winter, plus we had a couple of JMC Airlines flights which have now stopped - probably due to the takeover from Thomas Cook.

Can we recover from all this?

Oh, and I forgot to mention, a couple of years ago Thomsonfly, or Britannia as they were then, used a B762ER on most of their charter flights from MME, this summer they used a B738?! Why can't we fill a plane anymore?

Charter flights are a thing of the past for
areas like Spain/ France as the Lo-cos are cleaning up with better flexibilty and frequency and as new business is looked for the locos will gradually expand their market further and further past the magical 2-2.5 hours per sector

G-I-B

A number of things:-

People will tell you that us at MME have a great catchment area; well we do; so why can't we fill the flights?

1) The increase in lo-co to the traditional charter routes.

2) There is already enough capacity on the thinner routes out of NCL without putting two planes on (one from each).

3) I also don't think tour operators are that interested in MME due to facilities there etc....

Its catch 22 at the moment - I think we need better facilities and to do that, we need investment which isn't happening on the scale or at the speed I'd hoped. I don't think MME are making much money from charter ops either to fund the investment; rumour I heard was that MME were paying a decent amount per passenger to BY this summer to operate the BY738. Most airports actually charge the airlines not re-imburse them.

I love MME - its my local, but as I've said before, I just don't think things will turn around that quickly for us.

I was flying out to AMS the other day from MME and counted the number of people getting on board the Cork flight. There were 12 people!! Yes, 12 people on board a 737 to Cork. Is that really sustainable.

The catch 22 is:-

We need investment to get the airlines and make the experience pleasant for the passenger. The problem is, I don't think we'll get the investment without the airlines.

MME will continue to grow, but at a much slower rate that all of us on here hope for I'm afraid, which is very disappointing.

Can anyone remember the AIH Florida flights for example? All a distant memory.

The Britannia B762 that visited MME a few years ago was from a time when NCL used to have 1 based B762 machine (with the usual B752). The aircraft used to operate 'w' flights into MME, originating and returning to NCL.

Rya
 

Ryanair will soon close its Durham Tees - Ciampino route. No more services on this route from March 2006.

WHAT! No more Ciampino!? The load factors on that were pretty good not so long ago?!

Ryanairs summer schedules have yet to be released apart from the odd few.

No Jersey charter next year, the tour operators opting for bmibaby flights instead

mmeteesside

There was no Jersey charter this year for the same reason

@ DTVAirport

Ryanair will give up CIA - MME due to bad revenues and economic results... LF arent so good .. as a matter of fact this route has been recently reduced from daily to 3xweek....

Last FR flight on CIA - MME - CIA : 21st February 2006.

Yes, looking at the schedules the new Rome/Shannon route, announced today, replaces the Rome/DTV service.

The last DTV is on 21st Feb and the first SNN flight starts 23rd Feb.

since newcastle seem to have room for lo-cos and thousands of IT flights i can only assume the problems lie with the management and /or marketing department at mme or whatever its called.

The management of MME was in the hands of the 5 local authorities in the area before being bought recently by Peel Holdings. In my opinion, the elected representitives of those authorities, who found themselves sitting on the Airport's management board at the time, knew little or nothing about aviation. They, together with the airport's management, buried their collective heads in the sand when all the lo-co's were setting up, the result being that MME has missed the boat completely. It's now too late to play catch up, as airlines already have numerous destinations well established from adjacent airports.

Don't forget that MME has been an airport for over 40 years and still hasn't managed to attract a million passengers a year. For comparison, isn't Doncaster expected to reach this figure very shortly after being in existence for less than a year ? It's not that local people don't want to fly from MME, it's the fact that they've never been offered decent services in the first place. I don't want to spend an hour sitting in traffic driving to either Newcastle or Leeds when there's a perfectly good airport on the doorstep.

What is MME's business strategy ? They don't appear able to attract airlines in any numbers, either main line or lo-co, freight is virtually non existant, crew training has all but disappeared, and infrastructure wise, a part built proposed hotel on the site was abandoned years ago and remains a rusting steel frame. The current plans to expand the terminal building and ramp space, provide a parallel taxiway, and develop the south side for airport related activity (freight ?) have been waiting planning permission with Darlington Borough Council for almost a year and still nothing happens. Do I hear 'so did the plans for a massive freight terminal that was abandoned after five years of talk and no action'.

If BMi ever pulls out of MME, and things continue at their present bumbling rate of knots, all I can see happening is a start being made on the biggest new housing estate in Europe !!
As a local resident and supporter of my local airport, to say that I'm annoyed at the lack of anything positive happening at MME is an understatement.

mmm, while I can understand what people are saying, we also need to think about what the airport has achieved, especially since Peel have come in.

I can remember the time there were schedules to ABZ, AMS and LHR only, and remember when Intasun went bust, there was the one IT flight by Pandora Sol to Palma and 2 flights to Bulgaria, and that was all the IT flights that there was in one summer. In August this year there was actually a 10% increase in IT passengers over the previuos year. The BY 738 was much better employed than the Spanair MD-83 the previous year. Look what schedules we have now, especially next summer with bmibaby. Can we seriously complain that it is not good enough with all the competition from NCL and LBA. And I think that is the big problem. Holiday companies have aircraft based at NCL. So if they have a fight from MME half full and a half full flight from NCL they will cancel the MME flight and transfer the passengers to NCL. Thoamas Cook certianly did this last summer with the Mahon friday flights.

Jet2 and eayjet advertise in Darlington, Middlesborough etc. Do bmibaby advertise in Leeds and Newcastle??? So I think lots of passengers that could fly from MME fly from NCL and LBA.

Of course it would be better if the airport had more schedules, maybe in the future they will. The terminal is going to be very busy on some days of the week early in the morning- 2 bmibaby flights, bmi Heathrow, KLM to AMS and 2 Eastern flights, and the Britannia flight, is that not near to capacity?

Now it certianly is bad news about Ryanair to Rome. However is it the airports fault? Despite arriving in Rome at just before Midnight, there were 9861 passengers in August to Rome (7566 from NCL to Rome) and 8527 passengers in July. (7092 from NCL). I don't know, these figures don't look too bad to me. And how Ryanair expected the route to survive during the winter operating on a Tue, Thu and Sat, I just don't know. I guess yield was just not good enough, so they had to stop it. But what could the airport have done to prevent it stopping?

I am guessing also that 2 Lapland charters by Transun have also been cancelled too, as they have disappered from the airports website.

There is some not so good news for the airport, but I also think we must be happy at what the aiport is achieving.
:ok:

mmeman - I think you answered your own question, Ryanair had to lower the yield to fill a bigger a/c on the Rome 189 seats v Easy's 149. I think its a problem Ryanair have on some routes with a big a/c. I don't think its just Teesside that is finding it hard to fill a Ryanair 800 mind you!
As for IT's going to NCL well, they do it to us as well but its to Manchester!
:)

I agree completely with DB5.

I was recently speaking to someone who has just left a good position at MME and they said the management are in disarray. I don't see anything changing quickly.

As for the point about Ryanair, I worry what may now happen to our Dublin service when a 738 gets on the run full time.

Summer 2006

Onur Air are doing some flights from Durham Tees Valley in August + Sept as follows

10, 17, 24 + 31 August
7, 14 + 21 Sept

OHY 449 on THU Depart MME 0930 Arrive DLM 1600

OHY 450 on THU Depart DLM 0600 Arrive MME 0830

What tour operator (s) are the flights for?

Holidays 4u they have only flown from NCL, GLA, MAN and LGW in the past but added EMA last summer and MME this year.