EMA Parking & Land Side
 

I remember the day when the parking was completely free for 2 hours, and you could go for a pint upstairs (landside) in the Departures Hall and watch the Aircraft come and go from the spectators balcony. ahhh they were the days!

Ah, memories! Back in the day when our kids were little we used to go for the afternoon to MAN plane-spotting.
In those days (70's) you could walk right out to the end of the Piers and there was a Cafe on top of the main building for refreshments. Good Times gone forever.

Ostensibly in the name of security; in truth in the pursuit of profit. Doesn't have to be like that. Look at examples in Germany and The Netherlands and compare and contrast.

Used to be good times at EMA as a kid with the viewing area looking out at the TEA uk, Britannia, Air Europe etc jets.

Birmingham had the viewing area in the terminal also and Heathrow on top of the Queens Building. Shame I can't take the kids to these places, yet when we went Vienna and Amsterdam these area's still exist and are actively encouraged with tours etc.

Manchester and EMA at least have the viewing parks I guess... Heathrow have that tiny stand outside the Renaissance!

In the old days you could pitch up and leave the car there for hours, go up to the spectator terrace and wait for the odd Viscount movement. The reply from EMA will be go park in the long term car park and get the shuttle bus in - in America they have {free} cell phone car parks where you can wait then pitch up when your passenger calls you from outside.
It's only about profit and EMA don't get a to$$ about punters.

That's as may be but coming out of EMA on May 25, heading for A42, couldnt help but notice the little Fiat parked on that bit of waste land on the blind exit on the first roundabout or the two cars parked up a closed off ex-access road on the left immediately before the A42/M1 roundabout..
Where there's a will - -.?

Heaven forbid that an airport makes a profit! Why is that a bad thing?

Quite so. No profit and eventually no Airport.
EMA will likely make little money from their resident airlines (don't know about the freight side), so the money has to come, like it or not, from the 'punters' as you put it.
AFAIK there are bus services that run to and from EMA, if you dont want to pay for parking.

Why do we not get another airline to replace TUI, checked Thomas Cook for next year no flights for Florida or Mexico, come on we have only had ONE flight each week to Florida and Mexico which has just about been packed each flight, personally i think that is disgusting, who is supposed to get attract NEW airlines, or do they just sit in their Ivory Towers

If the airlines don't actually want to fly from your airport there isn't a lot the management can do.

As PDX says, nobody can force an airline to operate from an airport, they can however market their airport, and this may just be the crux of the matter.

MAG are pouring millions into upgrading and improving Manchester (see the Manchester thread if you want to see what's being built) and it isn't beyond the realms of possibility that MAG's policy is to put their marketing efforts into bringing new / increased business to Manchester, and EMA, which really has got very little new investment in passengers facilities in recent times, the focus of cargo growth and development. I hope that isn't the case, but when you look at it, EMA is far too close to BHX to be able to attract the legacy carriers to offer connections to principal European and Middle East hubs, and given the failure of BHX to hold on to any of it's scheduled transatlantic services, EMA is even less likely to be able to do so.

EMA may have to be satisfied with organic, rather than meteoric growth, and to be a passenger airport that serves the bucket and spade brigade primarily, but be a global hub for cargo. And there's nothing to be ashamed of in that!

May 2019 Pax
 

500,685 down 3.1%

12m rolling 4,828,501

Oh dear - at least our 2 were in there somewhere.
We'll help with June and October figures too. 😗

Yes EMA a bit stagnant
They had a rolling 12m of 4,859,139 in Feb 2007 - 12 years ago !

Parking Fees Reversed
 

Not many airports in the UK lower car park charges.Good on them.

Too late for me. Recently dropped my family off in the rapid drop off area for which the whole process took three minutes maximum. Various issues with getting out of the car park all out of my control and ultimately cost me £15 before they would raise the barrier for me to get out. Despite numerous protestations to the airport since they have showed no compassion to my plight and refused to refund a single penny. Another customer lost for this airport

Privilige 767 in last few days for Thomas Cook and A340 9H-PGS just turned up from BOH on a MT call sign.
Any offers?

I was in the control tower just coming off my break when I saw it on short final ! Nice to see something different !

Good news for East Midlands, Loganair have announced 2 new routes to Edinburgh and Glasgow, Flights commence from October 27th 2019.

GLA 0655 - 0800 EMA = Sa
GLA 1030 - 1135 EMA = M-F
GLA 1905 - 2010 EMA = Su
GLA 1945 - 2050 EMA = M-F

EMA 0830 - 0940 GLA = Sa
EMA 1210 - 1320 GLA = M-F
EMA 2040 - 2150 GLA = Su
EMA 2120 - 2230 GLA = M-F

EMA 0830 - 0940 EDI = M-Sa
EMA 1415 - 1525 EDI = F
EMA 1440 - 1550 EDI = M-Th
EMA 1740 - 1850 EDI = F&Su
EMA 1800 - 1910 EDI = M-Th
EMA 1955 - 2105 EDI = M-F&Su
EMA 2110 - 2220 EDI = F

EDI 0650 - 0800 EMA = M-Sa
EDI 1200 - 1310 EMA = Su
EDI 1430 - 1540 EMA = M-F&Su
EDI 1600 - 1710 EMA = M-F
EDI 1930 - 2040 EMA = M-F&Su

Loganair
 

Just replacing Flybe who are dropping these routes

Bad news for East Midlands as it represents another capacity reduction on scheduled services, and Flybe is also dropping EMA-JER which means the airport will be without a link to the island that has been operated almost since day one. The changes leave Flybe with just Amsterdam and Belfast after the end of October as far as I can tell. It is sad to see GLA drop to a twice daily ERJ-145 when in the good old days BD did it three times a day with a 105-seat DC-9-30 / 100-seat Fokker 100.

??

It's a capacity increase on EDI - 2 x 78 presently = 156 and 4 x 49 = 196.

GLA goes up to three a day from early next year so just about steady on capacity but on both routes, there is a big improvement to flight timings.

It was predicable really with Flybe likely preparing to link into Virgin's plans.

Luckily for EMA Loganair have stepped up to cover BMI and these routes, talking about the previous links to Edinburgh and Glasgow at one point didn't you have Easyjet/Go with 319's/733's and Baby with 737's? Sure I flew both at one point up there.

Assume Belfast and Amsterdam will cease with flybe too in the coming months, will be intriguing to see if Loganair further expand at EMA or maybe Aurigny or Jet2 can pick up Jersey? Loganair to BFS and would be nice to see if KLM come be enticed to AMS with better flight time options and at least 2 x daily.

Its a capacity reduction when also taking account of no more Jerseys (whether the increase on GLA takes place remains to be seen - no third flight on the Loganair website for early 2020 yet). And the GLA timings are hopeless for anyone needing to fly northbound on a weekday morning (albeit a 10 minute improvement over the current BEE schedule).

Quote from the Loganair press release:

'Early in the new year, Loganair will upgrade the Glasgow-East Midlands service to three flights in each direction per weekday and introduce a much-improved, customer-friendly timetable on the route, enabling business travellers to enjoy a working day in either destination. The upgrade will take place as soon as operational resources permit.'

As a potential user of the Glasgow and Edinburgh services I see this is a service improvement with frequency increases and a jet aircraft. More importantly, the service might be more reliable - I use the train these days because of the regular Flybe delays and cancellations. It looks as though prices start at £49.99 which is more than Flybe's lower price but the Loganair fare normally includes free hold baggage so will work out cheaper for some. If Flybe drop Amsterdam hopefully that might lead to a better service too and I would imagine the Jersey loss will get picked up by someone, if only for summer.

The jungle drums seem really quiet

Roll on summer looking a little better foreign airlines include Alba star(2),Air europa,Balkan(2) and Freebird (2) ,Cargo sees the introduction of Kalitta on the CVG route from March

I was chatting to a couple of mates in a pub and was shot down by them when I recalled EMA having Cat III approaches at both ends before the runway lengthening in 2000.

Am I imagining it? I’m sure I remember a Cat III approach to 09 in a F100 in 1999.

Never had anything but Cat I on 09, ILS is capable but not lighting

I don't know if anyone knows if there are any plans for Cat III on 09. I wonder if the airport sees little benefit from it. I suppose the number of occasions when an operator is unable to land on RW27 in the event of Cat III weather conditions are very few, The main issue would be tailwind with aircraft probably restricted to a maximum tailwind component of 10kts or less, but generally winds are light in foggy conditions so this isn't an issue.

Also the RW09 ILS (ILS Classification II/D/2 I believe) allows Lower than Standard Category I operations. I don't know whether this has been utilised, but I believe it gives an RVR minima of 400m, although I stand to be corrected on that.

I did wonder at the time of the major runway surfacing project whether that would be an opportunity to upgrade the lighting on RW09 - notably the need for TDZ lights, but it obviously didn't happen then. In the context of this discussion, Birmingham airport has been without even Cat I ILS on RW33 for over 6 months now and will remain so 'until further notice' apparently, but I'm not aware of there being any major disruptions over this winter so far?

Can think of a handful of occasions in 30 years where Cat 111 on 09 would have allowed traffic otherwise lost to land, most will take up to 10kts tailwind and not often more than that in low vis.. Its all down to cost benefit, interestingly few operators were bothered with the reduced minima for 09 - not sure if it involved extra costs for them in training etc. Only downside is making ATC work harder if departures need the other end!

Rats! I’ve just lost a bet!
I was quite certain I’d done a cat 3 to 09 before the runway extension 20 years ago!

Better go and sit in a darkened room. 😂

Summer 2020
 

Does anyone have any idea what will be based at EMA this summer? And is there any interesting W patterns or charter carriers?