24.6m passengers is only 3% more than STN's peak from 2007.
Would it really take another 7 years to hit 24.6m passengers ?

Quick sum:

£117m max profit made (2007) + £5m saving on overhead = £124m pro forma profit

£124m / 23.8m passengers = £5.21 profit per pax (2007)

£87.3m profit 2012 / 17.1m pax = £5.11 profit per pax (2012)

£201m profit projected (2019) / 24.6m pax in 2019 = £8.17 profit per pax

I can't see Mr O'Leary enjoying that kind of calculation.

Added to that, the new owners will have £1 billion to raise, and pay interest on - far more capital than BAA had invested.

Will Ryanair move to London (Cambridge)?:E

The new owner may decide not to make quite that much profit by cutting landing fees further to stimulate growth in passenger flights and numbers, on the other hand, they may want to to make further developments and improve the airport and by then, maybe Stansted won't be so reliant on Ryanair and the fact is, Ryanair don't have anywhere else to go in London and will probably be pleased enough, certainly more than they are now, to see new and seperate ownership from Heathrow.

Whoever the new owner is it won't be long before MOL has a falling out with them

Fancied a weekend in Tallinn (have seen it on the EZY list from STN for a while now and not been yet). Went searching for dates in November...guess what, only option is from LGW now!

So as of this Winter, where will EZY actually fly to from STN? It's starting to look like such a short list you wonder why they still bother.

I checked my logbook, and it's been a destination since 2004!

You're right though, and it is a concern to those easy staff based there.

DH

Getting rid of BAA out of Gatwick has shown what can be done.

BAA only ever wants to spend money in LHR and Stansted not having to contribute to the bloated BAA overhead will do very nicely on its own.

As for the €1 billion needed to be raised well Stansted has its own debts courtesy of BAA and they able to pay those.

Stansted has actually received a lot of BAA investment, one way and another. The whole terminal complex is only 20 years old, and there have been many investments in it since then. Plus lots of additional roads, new hangars and aprons all add up. That is why BAA want £1bn, and that's the amount the new owners will need to service from operating STN.
It's one of Ryanair's complaints that the regulatory asset base (on which charges are levied to make a return) is both too high, and rising.

Having last week been charged £72 for 27 hours of parking at Stansted, I am just wondering what the costs of a parking space for a day are in the accounts, and what my profit contribution might be.

I notice the car park is significantly emptier than it was five years ago.

Oh dear racedo. LHR pre 2008 was a disaster. Old terminals, cluttered layout, essentially bits falling down. Why would BAA let it go that far? Well they saw STN as the shining great white hope and sunk billions into making it work.

They built it on the back of LHR charges and profits, in effect BA paid for Ryanair's new base. It took a long time to turn that strategy around! LHR got the EuroPier in the 90s an that was pretty much it.

I might be naive here, but as long as the buildings are maintained in their current state, I can't see any obvious need for major investment at STN for quite a few years.
If the new owner wanted to significantly invest money in improving the airport in a value-for-money way rather than just normal maintenance, where would they spend the money ?
Since 2007, STN has lost between 6 and 7 million passengers per year, indicating that it's currently running well below capacity, so no need to call in the builders for the time being.

The only thing I can think of is the road between the terminal and the M11 which could maybe do with an extra lane, but not sure how costs for this would be attributed between Stansted and Govt and the local council may prefer passengers to be nudged towards using trains / coaches instead

David,

I think you are quite right, not a great deal of investment is likely to be needed. However, there will be ongoing maintenance and renewal (weren't the air bridges second-hand?) and I've a feeling STN's been getting tattier over the last 3/4 years while the uncertainty over its future was being resolved.

The biggest issue is the purchaser putting up £1,000,000,000 of someone else's money. That has to be paid for (interest + repayments) before dividends can be paid to the owner or profits re-invested in the facilities.

It used to be the profits from Heathrow that kept Stansted afloat.

Why

Sheer stupidity and short termitis long beloved of UK / US managers serving their masters in the stock exchange.

Ongoing maintenance happens every year so assume there is not going to be a huge backlog as quite simply losing anything mechanical will have its own implications on safety on a day to day basis and DoT would be involved very quickly.

Getting a Billion to buy will be surprisingly easy (crazy as it sounds) as despite there being a recession there is and will always be cash available for good investments with good long term returns.

They will soon be charging £2 a car drop off charge.

What Stansted needs is an owner who can reduce landing fees, just enough in order to make Stansted a strong competitor to the other London airports (which is still probably a lot since BAA have been hugely over-charging there). You can't really go majorly wrong with a few small infrastructural improvements and a few new bits and peices will help the airport sustain it's value-for-money factor and customer satisfaction levels.

The most important and urgent infrastructural development by far is improved rail links with trains leaving every 10 minutes rather than 15 and/or even more importantly, to get to Liverpool Street in 30 or 35 minutes to make them competitive to the Gatwick Express and rail services from Luton Airport Parkway to the capital. Stansted has got the advantage of being connected to Liverpool Street, walking distance from the Gherkin, Tower 42 etc. and even Tower Bridge can be walked to. It's probably the most central out of Paddington (from Heathrow), Victoria (from Gatwick) and St. Pancras (from Luton) with better underground and particularly DLR connections throughout London with Bank only down the road, rather than just being super close to just the touristy bits round Westminster and Embankment.

You are forgetting that Gatwick and Luton are both on the Thamelink line so in Luton’s case most trains cross London and don’t terminate there.

http://www.firstcapitalconnect.co.uk..._route_map.pdf

Yes but that has very little difference to the passenger who want to travel to London.

Expect that Luton serves 30 London stations without changing trains while Stansted serves 2. Have a look at the PDF file 2 posts back.

All the reason why it needs to be improved then!

There is absolutely zero chance of the Liverpool Street-Stansted line being improved substantially in the next 20 years or so. It doesn't feature on any future plans that I have seen, and it is a massive infrastructure project to increase the capacity of a rail line running through an inner city area serving an airport suffering a reduced passenger throughput.

FRatSTN - you seem to be expecting that a new owner of STN will be able to reduce fees whereas all indications are that it will need to raise them, as I argue above.

BAA are projecting future profit per passenger 60% higher than it is now - that looks like a price increase. So does the fact that the new owner will be servicing £1bn debt (= more than it does now) from operations.

Racedo is right in thinking that money is available for I'm not sure how good an investment Stansted is. The last 4 years have demonstrated that passengers and airlines prefer Gatwick and Luton (mainly for their locations), and Stansted suffers from 70% of its business being with Ryanair - an aggressive and formidable competitor and ruthlessly awkward customer!

@LGS6753
It depends on what you mean by 'substantially'. There was an outline plan to add an extra track for a critical stretch in North London of the London Liverpool Street - Stansted rail line. This would have reduced journey times to Stansted Airport by approx 5-10 minutes and added the capacity for more trains. However, the plan has been shelved for the next 5 years, due no doubt to the decline in Stansted Airport passengers.

There is also the possibility to add a second tunnel and track into the airport, which would again decrease travel times marginally and add capacity. This would need funding from the airport.

Beyond that, there are pie / sky 'thoughts' for a hispeed rail line to Stansted / Cambridge. Not before 2050, I would think.

Did it not occur to them that the decline in passengers may be a bottomless pit if they don't start making the airport more attractive for people using public transport?

It's all well and good waiting 5 years....by which point I doubt we'll see any major improvements in the passenger numbers at STN and then they'll put it off again!

I fully understand the merits of STN for anyone living north of Stansted, because the driving options are fairly good and there are a lack of other decent airport options until you get to EMA. However, that catchment area is pretty much a finite resource, there's only so far people will drive before the costs of petrol and parking add up to more than the additional cost of a flight from a regional airport. I think that the real question is how are they going to tempt more foreign passengers in to using it as a viable London airport, with such a slow creaking railway line and return tickets now over £30?

The train tickets at Stansted being so expensive is probably down to the rail industry. A 1-week return between London and Stansted Mountfitchet (a few mins from the airport but on the main line to Cambridge and not a separate spur) costs £22.60
A 1-week return from Mountfitchet to the airport costs £4.90
A 1-week return from London to the airport costs £31.50

The reason for the price disparity is that the train company does not sell the cheaper offpeak tickets to/from the airport but sells offpeak tickets from London to Mountfitchet

I suspect that tickets to the airport are treated as a cash cow to effectively subsidise train services in rural parts of East Anglia. There are no votes to be had from foreigners, but residents of East Anglia can vote in the UK. Furthermore the only people travelling every day by train to Stansted airport can partake in the scheme for reduced fares anyway, leaving nobody to protest

Stansted is the only London airport where road coach services to/from Central London continue to be a significant ground transport option, with two competing operators. This in itself reflects the perceived poor value of the train.

Meanwhile, when travelling out to STN last week in the evening peak hour, I had the carriage to myself for the final leg into the airport, and yet I was sat directly alongside the lifts exit at the airport. The train really doesn't get the usage you might expect.

London's fourth largest airport?

Who popped in at #3 then? Are things that bad in Essex?:}

Surely you haven't forgotten that Luton will end up as a 4 runway airport, so leapfrogging all other London airports, and putting STN into 4th place....

The original article says UK's fourth largest airport (not London's). Hence Manchester is in the mix at number three spot.

Feroman ... Will you be changing your name to MAGMAN now??

EZY will cancel TLL (26th Oct), BCN (6th Jan) and ALC (16th Jun) but will launch RAK, SOF and SSH in mid February.
Latest news - easyJet plc

Please can anyone explain why an easyJet flight (G-EZFG) recieved a water cannon arch greeting from the local fire service last Sunday? see Airbus A319-111, G-EZFP, EasyJet (U2 / EZY)

Serious responses only please.
Thanks in advance
G-APDK

Captain retired - his last flight.

A4

Please can anyone explain why an easyJet flight (G-EZFG) recieved a water cannon arch greeting from the local fire service last Sunday?

Not sure of the specifics on this one, but probably something to do with new route launched for the winter schedule. Didn't they launch Cagliari? Not sure if this is a new route, but looking at the list of routes, I think it is.

Luxembourg got its first Gatwick flight last week which was flown by a pilot who is from Luxembourg and it too got a water canon salute...

No, A4 is correct, it was a Captain's last flight before retiring!

Cagliari has been operated from Stansted for several years since moving across from Luton.

DH

A route moved from Luton! :eek:

Now that would've upset a certain thread! :D

The short list
 

LONDON--U.K. airports operator Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd., formerly BAA, has short-listed four bidders for Stansted airport.

The shortlist includes,

Manchester Airports Group.

New Zealand investment management company H.R.L Morrison & Co. Ltd.

U.S. buyout giant TPG

Australian company Macquarie Group Ltd.

Let the 'Dutch Auction' begin.