DONCASTER/SHEFFIELD
 

A few pieces of news from the airport.

*A planning application has been made to the local council for a rail station on site.

*A planning application has also been made for an access road on site. This road is being built from the terminal towards where the M18 link road is proposed, and so it seems the go ahead will be given soon for the link road.

*Thomas Cook have announced plans for a peak summer season service to Gran Canaria with Air Europa.

*The airport has taken delivery of two new push-back tugs.

*There will be a dedication service on 31st March at the airport for the new onsite RAF memorial.

*Work on the airports first hotel is due to commence in late April.

Interesting, this is the sort of expansion you'd expect from such a new airport, sensible moves.

I include Doncaster Sheffield as one of my local airports, even though I live really near MME, I also include NCL and LBA as my local airports and I'm thinking about adding HUY to the list. I know that was slightly off topic but I just thought I'd share :)

Hi, well if all you say is true then thats great news! Work at the airport now and have to say its a joy to work there, nice staff, nice facilities and hopefully it can only get better! Just hope it doesn't get too big too quickly like some places have! Have to say a rail link would be fab and also improved road access as don't like driving down all those back roads at stupid o clock in winter! Also I know we (TFly) are having at least one 757/767 based at DSA for all or part of the week in summer and of course longhaul is on its way, so its a really exciting time!

Well done DSA with 2 new tugs.
Do you have a decent Ambulift yet?
Great airport friendly staff!

Yes. New ambulift been in action for a couple of months or so now. :)

More DSA news,

*An application has been made with the local council for the building of 8 two storey business units in 5 blocks on the business park.

*ILS upgrade from Cat 1 to Cat 3 will take place at the end of the year.

*The airport fire category is now Cat 7 with Cat 8 available on request.

*Signature Flight Support has been appointed as DSA's Fixed Base Operator (FBO) for General Aviation aircraft and commences operation on the 1st of May 2006.

*Apron parking stands are currently 4 x Code E and 4 x Code D. Further parking for 20 additional aircraft is available. Up to B747 capable. An upgrade of the apron and taxiway capacity will commence at the end of the year.

Are there any other airlines planning on bieng based there in the near future? I could handle a job where I dont have to drive an hour to work :p

[quote=sam dilly]Well done DSA with 2 new tugs.
Do you have a decent Ambulift yet?
hey people, now you have 2 new tugs can stansted have the one you pinched from them on a short loan?

anyone know how the easyjet - geneva route is performing from here?

DSA-GVA is not continuing into this summer. No word on if it will return next winter

February saw 5734 pax on the route - 66% load factors
January saw 4781 pax on the route - 54% load factors

(The load factor figures are from a DSA forum)

An Aviation College is also being opened on the airport site to train future Flight Attendants and Maintenance Engineers.

Easyjet have seen sense and this month I believe they are paying a bit more for an earlier slot.
I have flown four times from DSA to GVA. Two of the times the plane departed at 8pm and arrived at 11pm in Geneva. :confused:
The other two times the plane departed at midday and about 2:30pm. :ok:
The contrast between the morning/afternoon and evening flights were remarkable. The evening flights were about half full, the morning/afternoon flights were full to the rafters.
Arriving at your hotel at gone midnight is not conducive to good travel.

The midday flights are at the weekend and so are bound to be fuller as more people take short breaks then.

Thomsonfly yesterday banned a teenager from their flights for life after he allegedly joked that he had a hand-grenade in his shoe whilst at the airport. You would have thought by now that even the most idiotic person would have learnt not to joke about security after the publicity from other such incidents :eek:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...re/4849292.stm

Anyone heard anything about a new route announcement this week? my sister works in radio and she's heard that all the press have been invited down this week. sounds good!

The press have been invited down for the RAF Heritage Memorial dedication ceremony which takes place on 31 March. There will be a number of fly-by's from R.A.F aircraft, so it should be a good opportunity for a close up of the fleet.

New routes are Ryanair to Pisa/Gerona

When was Girona announced?

Dont know but bookable

Leodis, I know you're up in Leeds and all, but surely you don't think NEMA will be the long haul airport of choice for South Yorkshire over MAN which offers many long haul scheduled routes???

On a side note DSA offers just as much long haul leisure routes as NEMA.

I reckon DSA has a good future. Its got good connections and the airport has infrastructure that could worry HUY and LBA if a low-co set up there. The area where the airport is based will benefit greatly.

AAArrr

Please refrain, may kill another thread... Lol:)

Looks like the playing off has begun with FR, after anouncing DUB from HUY a new set of routes are announced from DSA. I would expect similar routes from HUY next october.

Press Release From the Robin Hood Airport Website
 

Ryanair announce two new routes to Pisa & Barcelona (Girona) with low fares starting at £3.99 one way excluding taxes.
28 March 2006
Ryanair, Europe’s largest low fares airline, has announced it will be expanding its operations from Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield with the addition of two new routes to Pisa & Barcelona (Girona).
Following the huge success of the existing daily Dublin service, and as a direct reaction to consumer demand, Ryanair will start flying the additional routes towards the end of the Summer.
Pisa will operate four times weekly on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays & Sundays. Flights to Pisa start 14 September 2006.
Barcelona (Girona) will operate three times weekly on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Flights to Barcelona (Girona) start on 31 October 2006.
The new services combined bring an addition seven flights per week, taking Ryanair’s total weekly operation to fourteen weekly flights to Ireland, Italy & Spain.
The new routes will carry an addition 100,000 Ryanair passengers, bringing the total Ryanair passengers through the UK’s newest Airport to 200,000 annually.
Speaking at the press conference today, David Ryall, Managing Director at Robin Hood Airport said:
“We are delighted that Ryanair is expanding its services from Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield. These new routes offer more choice to passengers and are further evidence of Ryanair’s commitment to work with the Peel Airports Group to develop air services at our Airports; Liverpool John Lennon, Durham Tees Valley & Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield”
Announcing the new routes at Robin Hood Airport today, Ryanair’s Deputy Head of Sales & Marketing Europe, Caroline Baldwin said:
"With the two new routes Ryanair will serve three destinations from Doncaster Sheffield and deliver 200,000 passengers a year sustaining 200 jobs in the local economy.
"The new Pisa service will provide a fabulous opportunity for passengers to explore Tuscany, one of Italy's most beautiful regions, and take city breaks to both Pisa and Florence at the lowest fares in Europe.
"Barcelona (Girona) offers the perfect excuse for a few days off and here you can mix shopping and party life with chilling out on the beach. In the region you will also find the Cava district, the home of the Spanish "champagne".

So will this be a Dublin based A/C? I guess it will do DUB - DSA - PSA - DUB?

Dublin is with Dublin based aircraft. Pisa and Girona will be with aircraft at those respective bases.

Doncaster Airport - fees
 

please note that new fees are in force at Doncaster Airport WEF 1/4/06 - of particular interest to GA pilots (landing & training).

the new fees can be found on the airport web site @ http://www.robinhoodairport.com/page...nities_17.html
the link to the fees can be found at the bottom of the page.

there is an ammended version due to be up-loaded by the end of the week as fees for Go-arounds were missed off.

In short there is a minimum invoice charge of £25.

Instrument approaches and Touch and Gos - 50% reduction in runway charge.

Visual circuit Go-arounds - 75% reduction in runway charge.

Get the impression they do not want GA at DSA?!?

Peel want to make money not lose it.

Yep, no Commercial Airport wants GA 'puddle jumpers', and it does a**e me when they say 'oh but we train tomorrows pilots', so what! Driving instructors train tomorrow's firemen, ambulancemen, lorry drivers or whatever (obviously they have to take further exams to get the licence) but driving instructors do not get road tax reductions or discount at the local BP! So why should someone who owns a knackered old Cessna Skyhawk fly for tuppence?

Minimum invoice fee of £25 is entirely reasonable, why should anyone have to process unnecessary paperwork when you can pay on the day, either in person or over the telephone by credit card.

50% off for training flights, again, very reasonable for an organisation who will never make any money out of private flying/GA even if 100% of the fee was charged.

Well said Nik-Nak, all the GA say they do not need CAT, but guaranteed if an airport did not charge CAT fees and a GA went 'nose in' they would wail at the bill figures with 4 noughts minimum spring to mind. THEY would say it was only a few firemen, but what about the closure of the airport all the lost landing fees, diversion costs etc, it could cost the airport dear, that is why most UK airports insist on min.£12m insurance. Imagine Mr PJ accidentally hits 757 whilst taxi-ing whoops big dosh, but as far as Mr PJ is concerned this is irrelavant as he is a good pilot with 40 years weekend experience!!! and flew a Spitfire or whatever. Puddle jumpers have no place at Commercial Airports, there are plenty of grass strips for them with landrover fire trucks etc and cheap landing fees. USE THEM!!!!

I would point out that not all 'puddle jumpers' as you call us - in a rather derogatory way if I may say so - can fly into grass strips. Many can, yes, but some a/c types are just not suited to grass.

Whilst I understand the feeling that the largest UK airports may not want GA aircraft, I find it surprising that many of the quieter (regional) airports would not want the extra income generated from GA landing fees. Some airports seem to positively welcome GA (Norwich for example - NikNak's neck-of-the-woods I believe). Humberside would lose out a great deal if the FTOs went elsewhere. Plymouth has been actively encouraging GA to go visit, I gather that Cardiff are also welcoming, with a reasonable landing fee of circa £18 if you use the Flying Club.

Southampton appear (from what I hear - after all this is a 'rumours' website) to be one of the few commercial airports trying in no undertain terms to kick out the GA population.

Lets say for example that we don't allow GA to 'jump the puddle' over to Guernsey, as this is a commercial airport. Where would GA traffic go then? No other grass strips at Guernsey that I can think of (and by the way, Guernsey was superbly welcoming when I went a couple of years back). Same goes for Jersey, Alderney etc.

If 'Mr PJ' does taxy his A/C into a 757 then he's an idiot. I'm not saying it can't happen, but saying that he can't land at a commercial airport because of that tiny risk is equivalent to saying... "we mustn't let anyone fly who hasn't been commercially trained because they might crash into a football stadium/shopping centre".

In the end it's up to the airport to decide their own charges, and for potential visiting GA pilots to choose whether to go there and pay, or go somewhere else and pay their fees to somewhere more deserving. Commercial airports are a business, and make commercial decisions. If they decide they need GA income they will make it affordable for GA to visit. If not then they'll probably try to price GA traffic out of the equation.

If DSA want to charge a minimum £25 (their choice) then I won't go (my choice). But to make a blanket-statement that GA has no place at commercial airports is clearly incorrect when you look at the number of regional airports with FTOs. If EMA can happily operate GA alongside commercial traffic then so can many other airports.

By the way 7006fan, where and in what did you learn to fly? In a 767 from grass strip perhaps..?;)

Al,

correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think that DSA are trying to discourage GA at all, they're merely adopting much the same terms & conditions as most airpoprts throught the UK do for GA.
I'm afraid that even we have the £25 minimum invoice fee, although our fees if paid on the day - either in person or by telephone - are a lot cheaper.

Despite the heavy metal that DSA, we and other places handle, every GA movement is (usually) another customer for the cafe or other terminal franchises.
Ineviatebly there may come a time when DSA has to restrict GA, thats the way of the commercial world but I would hope that there remains room for everyone in some form or other.

To be fair to Southampton, their commercial operations have expanded enormously in the last few years, and there's literally no space to expand the airport. In any business, maximising your income is the primary task, especially if you're accountable to shareholders, so it's no suprise that, unfortunately, G/A were the first to go.

Latest news is;

*An application has been lodged with Doncaster Council for a hotel.

*P&O Cruises have announced yet another cruise flight to Barbados to join the Oceana sailing on 07 December 2007

*Thomsonfly have announced that there will be a weekly winter flight to Salzburg

*There will be a fourth weekly Tenerife flight from Thomsonfly this winter

* New Flyglobespan 767 G-CDPT is at the airport doing circuits today. Following in the long line of recent crew training flights.

Thomas Cook have underlined their commitment to the area and the airport further. They have added Palma and Tenerife for summer 2007 with Air Europa

Anyone know why the Excel 737 was doing a flight down to PGF today? seems a fairly bizarre destination.

Hull FC were playing a French Rugby Team (Les Catalans or something like that). It was a charter for the fans

New Thomsonfly routes for Summer 2007 are Larnaca and Gran Canaria.

Not showing at the moment for Thomsonfly are Gerona (which Ryanair start in Sept), Pula and Peurto Plata (Although Sanford and Cancun are on sale for S07).

Gerona appears to have moved to LBA

Wizzair are to start Doncaster - Katowice on Sept 19. Service is on Tuesday, Friday and Sundays.

This quote was in todays Scunthorpe Telegraph

Looks like Easyjet could have left DSA for good