I think another reason for this is Ryanair strictly enforces a one bag boarding policy...

easyJet and Monarch for example do not seem to take issue with you having a small separate bag with Duty Free or things you have purchased in the airport.

With Ryanair, you must put it all in your single bag!

I remember being at Malta Airport two or three years ago, and someone was forced to leave their duty free behind, as they had no room in their bag to put it... A member of cabin crew was helping process the boarding at the gate, and showed no flexibility and would not allow anyone else to carry the bag for them. Maybe it is more relaxed now?

Um, that's how business works. The reason Ryanair hacks so many people off is that instead of one "high" price, you get a "cheap" headline airfare and the difference between the two is made up in discretionary payments that are really essential. It's a false saving for most people.
The level of your business acumen is clear if you think WHS in Departures is good value. In all seriousness, and I do mean to be direct here, they're one of the most complained about rip off merchants, Retail price of snacks and drinks at airports is at a substantial mark up versus high street trading. I feel robbed everytime I use them. Are you back working for FR btw? Thought you were with EZY now?
Any idiot can make "cost savings", cut charges and let Ryanair grow massively. However they're supposed to be making money as an airport business, the medium term prospects for enhanced profitability seem elusive to me. We shall see.

Skipness One Echo

You have completely missed the point!

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Um, that's how business works.

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No it isn't! Not all businesses out there hack off customers through high charges to make hefty profits. Often in the most successful and most sustainable cases, we see businesses offering discounts and cost incentives to entice growth and make profit through the extra customers bought in by that (which is what MAG is doing at Stansted with Ryanair).

As I've said, it's not ideal for Ryanair to become increasingly dominant, but what else do you expect MAG to do? They are never going to increase profits by raising costs because airlines would be pulling more flights out, and other airlines just simply will not/cannot deliver the level of growth that Ryanair can at this stage.

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The level of your business acumen is clear if you think WHS in Departures is good value.

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Never did I say Smiths is good value, far from it. There's no need to go on about it being rip-off compared to high street branches, I think we all know how much we are ripped off inairports! The point is that it can still be cheaper than buying on Ryanair and why there is an incentive for people to buy in the airport. There's little business knowledge needed to see that, more a case of common sense.

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Any idiot can make "cost savings", cut charges and let Ryanair grow massively.

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Anybody except BAA of course, because they have that exact attitude of passing stupidly high costs onto airlines to make profit that you seem to see as the norm. It's that management that lead to why Stansted fell apart under their ownership. It couldn't be clearer to see that their management became a complete failure. That was no way to carry on!

But you know what? I don't really care about all the negativity and speculation of profits falling in light of this news. If that was ever an issue MAG would not have agreed this deal with them, it's that simple!!! I think it's a complete win-win situation for Ryanair, MAG and the 1.3 million extra passengers in 2014. I just hope that the sooner some people can brighten up and see that, the better!

For those that missed it part of the Ryanair MAG deal over stansted is that the one bag rule will be relaxed to encourage more spend at the airport.

The old business adage "Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity but cash is king" seems to apply here. MAG are chasing turnover, hoping that profits will accrue from higher revenue, once the high fixed costs of an airport operation are covered.

What they are doing is engaging in that most dangerous manoeuvre, marginal cost pricing. And they appear to have forgotten the basic rules of supply and demand.

Although Stansted is the least attractive of the London area airports due to its location, it is still a London airport, and slots at any London airport will become scarcer - and thus more valuable - as the economy picks up. They have offered Ryanair a deal that gives them lower costs with increasing throughput (ie the scarcer the resource, the cheaper it gets!).

They are so desperate for short-term income to service their massive borrowings that they are engaging in desperate measures. The FR deal, and the EZY one a few weeks ago, demonstrate the fear in the MAG boardroom that as a result of overpaying for STN they will soon have to face up to the taxpayers of the Manchester area who own their business, and are set to get less out of it than when they were just running their local, successful, airport at Ringway.

Oh, I don't know, I see a niche ancillary revenue opportunity for airports here: sales of supporter scarves, woolly hats etc: "Stansted United", "Luton Airport 4ever", "Size isn't everything - LCY", etc.

They could advertise on PPRuNe and really nail the demographic. ;)

Spot on LGS......

The cynic in me wonders if this wasn't a plot hatched in Dublin a few years back...

All a bit too cozy I reckon....

Think you need to take the blinders off.....

Success for most businesses is a combination of gaining new customers and expanding what you are selling to the existing ones.

There is pretty much little cost to Stansted in gaining an extra 50,000 passengers a week. Security still has to be paid for whether its 300,000 or 350,000 pax a week going through airport as has everything else. You may need some additional headcount here and there but very little...................no new car parks, no new trains, no new facilities.

Incentivising existing businesses to grow is easier and cheaper than investing vast sums in acquiring new customers who can never give you the same volume in a short timescale. You need new but existing do not have to invest in setting up a new operation and market their services as they already doing that anyway and existing less likely to take all business away at a stroke of pen.

The idea that signing a 10 year agreement is somewhat short term is laughable, frankly most service providers would snap the arm of a customer who agreed a 10 year deal because that in itself is bankable revenue.

As MAG have highlighted a clear strategy in investing in the airport, building passenger numbers and getting existing operators to sign long term contracts then I wonder what you would percieve as good management ?

In 6 months they have thrown out the old strategy and made progress lacking for so many years.

Same agruements were used when Gatwick was bought but amazingly now when you go to the airport it looks like it wishes to welcome people in, not drive them down a dingy corridor with an entrance unworthy of a train station.

BAALHR held back airports for years because it was LHR or nothing, thankfully that has ended.

racedo

You are spot on! Unfortunately some people can never be satisfied, but we'll see how things change for the better in the years to come.

Thank goodness somebody can see round the logic of MAG's strategy, and thank you for explaining it perhaps more specifically than I did.

If anybody is interested to find out a little more about the £80m redevelopment, then please have a look through this link. It includes what MAG are going to be doing with a timeline of events up to early 2016:

http://www.stanstedairport.com/media...-v2-210813.pdf

To me this looks great, very evolved around passenger experience rather than just increasing capacity. This only shows how MAG's strategy clearly differs to the failing BAA one!

While racedo has a point about the costs of running an airport being significantly weighted towards fixed rather than scaling per passenger and Stansted having the infrastructure in place to support plenty more passengers, I'm in some doubt as to whether a 10-year deal is perhaps *too* long term.

London is most unlikely to have an additional runway for another 10 years. While the economy has its good and bad years, if we assume an *average* growth in demand for air travel between now and 2023, at what point does demand for London airport capacity start to overtake supply ? Yes, I know that when runway capacity gets tight, airlines do things like upsizing aircraft from an A319 to an A321, and airports enlarge terminal capacity.

If it'll take a full 10 years for spare capacity to be used up, then MAG have likely done the right thing. If it'll take 5 years for current demand to mop up spare capacity and there are no break clauses in the contract allowing STN to raise their airport charges, then the deal is more in the airlines' favour.

The length of the deal could indeed be construed as long but in reality if MAG feel the deal is profitable then you cannot fault the logic on signing the deal as long as they can.

Runway closed
 

Stansted runway was closed earlier due to police incident! I believe it is now open however an aircraft is on the Hijack stand with lots of blue and twos!

a Srilankan A330 I believe

I would say that title actually goes to Southend-on-sea airport, but then some people would argue that Southend is not actually a London airport. Not sure I would support that argument but it might as well be on the moon if you need to get there by public transport for an early flight.

Although some may say its the most attractive according to the Which? survey.

A320 at SEN
 

Will an A320 be transfered from stansted to southend to do the TFS flights? or will it come from luton?

Only one A320 based at STN, and that's busy every day, so doubt it will come there.

Aegean Airlines
 

Aegean will be back at Stansted again for a brief period over the Christmas hols. For that time they will serve Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted in London.

Quite an interesting report from CAPA about the Ryanair deal at Stansted.

Ryanair?s new growth deal with London Stansted Airport: mutual love-in? | CAPA - Centre for Aviation

Still some big questions to be answered, but the most interesting point for all those worried about how MAG are going to make profit is this:

"While lower fees will dilute Stansted’s aeronautical yield per passenger, the price elasticity of demand for air travel will stimulate passenger numbers as Ryanair will also lower its fares. In addition, Stansted will continue to receive the benefit of retail sales and its net retail income per passenger will be unaffected. This should mean that a cut in airport fees should lead to rising passenger numbers and increased revenues for Stansted. In a largely fixed cost business, and particularly one where incremental passenger handling costs are very low, this should drive higher profits for Stansted."

Ok,

With lower fares, lower fees and mostly increase in LCCs etc how exactly is STN going to raise the funds for any 2nd runway ?

Not sure MAG will have enough profits, they are still paying off MAN 2nd runway .

Nigel

Translation : We don't have the data we need for analysis but we're going to speculate regardless.

Translation: Ryanair's charges will reduce, so if they don't increase passenger numbers, we're in deep sh1t.

Further translation: We're even more in Ryanair's clutches than we were before.

LGS and Skipness.

So is that all you have to say? That's highly unusual. Please keep going, I want to hear more...

But on one condition...

Please add something much more concrete which you'll find I often do.

Please do us all a favour and try not to give us a compilation of your clever little remarks or this stupid routine LGS especially you have of picking bits from reports that give you the slightest opportunity to twist them. It simply demonstrates nothing but stupidity.

If that is all you have to contribute, it says a lot about the credibility of what you are saying!!

How about adding your own links to credible analytical sources and reports to back up what you're saying?? Oh no, sorry you can't, because they frankly don't exist.

On the face of it, the paragraph you refer to seems fairly positive for Stansted. The trouble is it's full of assumptions. What seems to be implied is that increasing numbers of passengers do not increase the wear and tear on the terminal and infrastructure (a "largely fixed cost business"). It's the old mass tourism problem revisited. Will the profit level from increased traffic meet the expenses of infrastructure maintenance and refurbishment?. There's also the assumption ("benefit of retail sales") that Ryanair passengers have the same financial power as those flying with other carriers and so will have the shopkeepers' delighted. Has that been proven elsewhere? My own suspicion is that retail margins will be lower because those products proving popular will in fact be lower margin products while higher margin products will eventually disappear from the shops. To me it seems like an exercise in chasing passenger numbers at every cost.

CONTROL OF AIRSPACE
 

SEN are trying to get control of their airspace (2.5 miles radius ) How much higher will planes have to fly (if any) from STN/LCY

mikkie4

If you go the SEN website you will find a page entitled Controlled Airspace where there is a link to the consultation document. That will answer all your questions.

Another attempt to try and claim that people flying Ryanair do not have any money.

Stansted KNOW what Ryanair passengers spend because they have 13 Million of them a year.

If as you claim that more passengers would be reducing high margin items then wouldn't they have already done so years ago :ugh:

Claims that it will cost the airport more in terms of wear and tear are pretty bogus because wear and tear happens anyway and instead of having 20 million in 18 months you have 20 million in 15 months..............little or no difference.

Infrastructure already in place with car parks, acccess, trains etc so instead of a Stansted express going with 150 passengers it has 250, no additional cost in the slightest.

I've been having a read of MAG's press releases and other PR as to how they will transform the facilities at Stansted. Sounds awfully nice and helpful, but given the money involved I have to assume it's simply a reorganisation of what is inside the main terminal building and not an expansion. On that basis, this means some areas will be shrunk down while others are enlarged.

Does anyone have good information as to what MAG's capital investment and terminal redesign plans *really* involve ? The relocation of security is of particular interest.
I'm interested in more than just "we're adding some extra toilets in a corridor".

To be honest, Stansted doesn't need a lot of expansion, reorganisation of the terminal building is exactly what it needs.

If you ever fly from Stansted, you'll notice that the check-in concourse is really quite spacious now. Even at 5-6am at its busiest, its more than adequate. Ryanair has a lot of passengers who don't even use the check-in/bag-drop desks now so there's less of a need for check-in/bag drop desks than there used to be.

The Departure Lounge on the other hand is often quite busy and at 5-6am, seating can be tight. Security is probably the worst thing about Stansted, again at 5-6am, quite busy.

It is only common sense to make better use of the existing infrastructure to suit the needs of passengers. It's more than just adding a few more toilets and simply "moving" security.

Security will relocate but also increase from 18 to 22 lanes to improve passenger flow. Some other nice additions like a "calm zone" between Security and the Departure Lounge which is quite a unique idea. It allows passengers to re-gather belongings after security in a more relaxed and spacious manner.

More flight info screens and a countdown to gate number announcements is also part of it. That will have a great impact on all those Ryanair passengers crowding the screens waiting 10 minutes so they can be first to run to the gate!

The more major stuff is the doubled amount of seating in Departures, more shops and restaurants, a food court by 2016. All this offers better comfort, better choice and encouraging more spend from passengers. Just as well they have 1.3 million more passengers next year to help make that investment worth while!

It's a completely different investment from an expansion entirely. While Heathrow and Gatwick want to raise charges to airlines and passengers and just make their airports bigger through big infrastructural investments and claim that will increase the quality of their airport, MAG at Stansted have got right to the bottom of what really makes passengers more satisfied and investing in improvements, not expansion while keeping the place more affordable. That brings massive added value to the airport and potentially opens up huge opportunities.

Remember only £40m really is their own investment, another £40m funding is from commercial partners. That's a big investment, but it isn't massive! It has the potential to help Stansted stand out from Heathrow and Gatwick as a better and more customer friendly airport. It really does demonstrate how competition works and how each airport competes in their own way now the BAA monopoly has been broken up.

Long-haul returns to Stansted
 

It has been revealed that Pakistani carrier Airblue will start flights from Stansted to Lahore from next year.

MAG are reportedly holding detailed talks with several other airlines and has said one is close to announcing another route for next year as well.

MAG chief puts focus on two-runway future for Stansted - FT.com

I wouldn't put my money on it since Airblue is rumoured to be on the brink of collapse.

What is your source of information on this potentially damaging rumour ?

Pegasus Airlines
 

Is it true Pegasus Airlines are pulling out of Stansted?? I have flights booked for early next year :uhoh:

Pegasus airlines
 

I heard that they could be moving to luton around April time

Sounds like a "Spotters Rumour" B737 , flights are bookable from STN right through next summer:ok:

proves nothing. can be changed in an instant.

tb

Did MAG also purchase all the land and housing that the BAA has been buying up over the last 20 years or so to facilitate runway 2? I am sure I read the BAA flogged it of in a separate deal?

An ex colleague held out selling his cottage somewhere close (near where the KAL jumbo dived into a lake) until he retired. Got a handsome cheque to go into his retirement kitty, BAA then rented it out pending demolision.

If Pegasus do move to Luton at least it would end the Luton fans argument that El Al would never move back to STN because the Jewish population is nearer Luton, as STN is the best airport for the Turkish contingent.

I'm not convinced personally, but you never know

Pegasus could benefit from a transfer to Luton. Aside from a bigger catchment area and better surface access, their current flight schedule would not conflict with Luton's busy periods, where capacity is limited.
No doubt LTN would offer an introductory deal to a new airline too.
It seems that the EZY flight to SAW is not bookable after March 2014, so there could be a ready-made market for them too, if EZY are in fact dropping the route.