Perhaps, but the catchment for CVT is still pretty huge - if you factor in Brum, Warwickshire, CVT itself & also Northamptonshire.

Does anybody know how things are going for CAHL at the moment? I hear that at Thomsonfly we have been incredibly impressed with the company, and the contract for handling us at CVT has been extended, though not sure who else we would be handled by?

It seems that the 735s will be going over the winter to make room for more -300s. With rumours floating around that the 737-800 is the way to go for the company, it'd be nice to have some -700s perhaps at CVT.

thomsonfly.com

CAHL have been impressive they have won the winter award for best perfoming handling agent for t-fly, outperforming handling agents at all other UK stations...

Add to that as well south Leicestershire, should they be desperately torn between CVT and EMA. In all fairness though a lot of people will travel to any airport provided they save some money on the air fare. I know of people that have travelled from Wales, Liverpool, Cambridgeshire...even London to use Coventry airport, I am sure it is a similar case with most airports around the country.

How many flights can Coventry handle at anyone time? If I remember correctly from my visit last winter; there were four stands for the 735s, one baggage belt, two customs officers who stood at the entrance to the arrivals "hall" to meet inbound passengers, eight check-in counters & one security channel. I was at the airport on an evening, so dread to think what checkin & departures are like first thing.

Also, what is the story with Coventry Airport Handling? Are these people ex-aviance guys who started their own company when aviance pulled out of CVT? What size operation is it? Any experiences?

Arrivals can only handle one flight at a time I believe...possibly due to the size, but also possibly because of immigration control...I don't know, somebody correct me on that.

Last Summer, Departures was handling 4 flights in the morning "rush". AGP, PMI were always 100+ outbound, AMS was yielding good loads particularly around the weekend as a city break, SNN was a bit of a disappointment with planes only being approximately one third full, on Wednesdays there was also the Mahon Charter which I am led to believe received average yields of around 100. Still, at a rough guess I don't think far off 320 at the busiest time would be a bad guestimate....not bad for a portakabin though.

When the current work on the south apron is complete there will be eight stands capable of use by a 737-500 although I believe one of these will be kept to push aircraft back into.

cvt person

Any chance that they might use some aircraft stands to park a 757 at right angles to the other a/c or would this not permit any area for the 735s to move?

There will be space for two 757's to be accomodated across four 737-500 stands. Only one could be accomodated last year which lead to all sorts of difficulties. The same arrangements can be used for the 737-800 and Airbus A 321

Trouble with the 737-800 as we all know from 4 weeks ago, is that you cannot guarantee landing a fully laden one at CVT, or one taking off for that matter. Would be good to see some more 757 activity though.

Will these four extra stands that are capable of handling 737-500 sized aircraft be able to handle the same number of 733s considering that this is the apparent aircraft of choice for Thomsonfly's Scheduled expansion at CVT. When will these new stands be ready, and could the airport realistically handle say six flights at once?

All the stands can accomodate a 737-300.
The concrete for the new stands, actually they are extensions of existing ones, has been laid, the lighting is in place and I believe they were due for marking this week. They presumably will then need CAA approval before they become operational.
As for capacity it depends what is meant by at once. The arrivals can handle one flight at a time but usually clears within a few minutes so eight in an hour is theoretically possible. Departures I'm not sure it has ever been tested but I'd estimate four flights at once.

As I said before, my views on CVT at this time are only of those of a passenger, as opposed to someone professionally linked with the airport but here goes. From what I remember, there were two actual boarding gates & a holding lounge which seemed to only be able to accommodate maybe two flights at a time. Also the checkin hall being all manual checkin, ruled out the option of having a "snake" and "common checkin" thereby meaning that queues would end up becoming rather lengthy. I would love to see TOM expand from CVT, and whilst the ramp may be opening up, I definitely see the lack of terminal space as a big hurdle.

I don't see Thomsonfly expanding out of CVT in the close future unless there was a very serious threat of competition from another airline coming in. We've pretty much stabled our route network (sadly at the expense of NAP & CIA) although there are plenty of opportunities particularly in the Iberian peninsula & Italy. It's a shame HLX decided to grow from BHX as opposed to CVT (with the old 4x weekly CVTCGN route) but the route was apparently unpopular, although I never saw any advertising for the route in & around the west midlands. I guess it's just a case of wait & see.

With regards to the check-in, departure hall, I think three flights departing within an hour would be the absolute limit. Remember there's only one security channel, limited seating & checkin space. Arrivals clears much faster, but short of adding another security channel and perhaps another 100 seats, I can't see huge expansion within the close future.

It's going to be a quiet night at Coventry since Emerald's AOC has been revoked by the CAA & they operated the majority of the night cargo flights (unless somebody else steps in to operate them)

FC

CAH Origins
 

CAH started before (& was the reason that) aviance pulled out of CVT, It was formed by the ex founder of Reed aviation with help from the then STN MGR of aviance at CVT (anyone know what Tom's doing now), it was a shock to aviance when CAH adverts started to appear around Cov a/port & they did not know that the airport authority also had a stake in CAH as well, if I were a cynic (some say I am) I would wonder how long Tom had been planning this with the airport, funny how when he suddenly resigned (Friday afternoon, gone Monday morning) his hard drive wiped itself & loads of paperwork went walkies!!! Reason given was that he wanted to get out of the business yet 1 month later he's unveiled as the new STN MGR of CAH.
CVT was always aviances smallest station with approx 40 Ramp/Op's staff only, out of the 12 Op's guys, 8 resigned to go to CAH as well as the only Ramp Supervisor & a number of the senior ramp staff (most of the x-ray trained staff). as CVT was predominantly FRT orientated at that time (Cov Airport were obviously in talks with TOM about CVT but they never let on to aviance, they were then bought out by TOM's owners!!), financially it was really difficult to keep the aviance op running & the powers to be decided to close the base (a couple of contracts had gone to CAH anyway). the way it was conducted by all sides did leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth & you had to feel sorry for those staff that CAH did not want, but they were all people who were not liked by the CAH STN MGR & he wanted his team with him (can't blame him for that).
Initially there was a large investment by CAH leasing new equipment & they have done well from what I’ve heard, however is the council planning committee still going on about the new terminal? that may cause problems in the future
Lite: I hope that's given you an insight into CVT (I do know a bit more about what went on but my lips are sealed) :cool: :ok:

The interim passenger facility that was subject to a public inquiry last year now has approval following a decision by the government. There is a planning application in for a larger permanent pasenger terminal which is currently before yet another public inquiry, this time for non determination by the local authority. However the local authority stance before this inquiry is that new terminal should be granted planning permission subject to certain conditions. Although there are slack periods when the current arrangements could accomodate additional flights I would agree that anything other than very modest growth will have to await the new terminal development.

If the current facilities can cope with the current passenger throughput, who is going to pay for the new facilities and what extra custom has been promised to facilitate this?

BTB
At a wild guess the current owners will invest in new facilities as the past owners did in facilities and on going projects
:)

With all due respect, the same could be said of a lot of airports around the world, not just CVT.

Birmingham International Airport for example is capable of handling 12 million per annum, yet last year was one of it's best for years in terms of passenger numbers with 9.6 million pax. Therefore the current setup there is coping easily, so why would there be the need of a second runway and 30 million passenger terminal airport?