Ciudad Real Airport.
 

Does anyone know what is happening to this airport? Is it permanently closed? The Notams do not appear to be up to date. :rolleyes:

The airport company has massive debts and no business! Yes, it's closed down. :ok:

Does it have any form of regular commercial passenger service, be it scheduled or charter, any more ?

Note to pedants - in this context, regular means at some kind of recognisable frequency - be it daily, weekly, fornightly or monthly - a one off flight doesn't count

What a coincidence! The last commercial flight left this airport just today. In Spanish: 40 pasajeros para el último vuelo desde Ciudad Real, try Google translate.

According to Typically Spanish - Spain Business, the airport has gone bust with debts of 290 million Euros and is now closed.

The last flight departed yesterday with just 45 passengers.

Looking for sources of European debts, anyone? Put into the ground, literally.

Ciudad Real Airport or as it is also known Don Quijote's Airport is not, repeat, is not closed. True the last regular flight departed from the airport recently but the airport remains open and FULLY staffed.

There are at least 18 private flights expected to land and take off in the next few days.

An odd situation since the airport is in administration but the receivers have pointed out that they have no authority to close the airport down and that it will be the Judge at the Bankruptcy Court, who must take the decision to close down the airport, after their financial report has been submitted.

So if you have an airplane or a helicopter and fancy landing at Don Quixote-Ciudad Real before the airport closes down, you still have the chance......

Too late
 

If you fancied a quick trip to Madrid [well only a couple of hundred kilometers away] I'm afraid you are too late.
Only in Spain is there sufficient land and enough corruption to build a white elephant such as this, plus of course all the others mentioned in other threads.
As an ex-pat happily living in Spain, one of the things that does make me somewhat angry [note the British reserve] is how the Spanish voters seem quite relaxed about the flagrant mis-use of their taxes on these ludicrous projects.
! Murcia Today - Ciudad Real Airport Closed

wowzz,

That aside, wasn't the business case for this airport based on having a "fast" AVE link to central Madrid? Forget that such a link still needs the frequency to work and has to be paid for on top of the "savings", which have already been wiped out by cheap terminal space coming available at MAD, where is the business case?

[QUOTE]As an ex-pat happily living in Spain, one of the things that does make me somewhat angry [note the British reserve] is how the Spanish voters seem quite relaxed about the flagrant mis-use of their taxes on these ludicrous projects.[QUOTE]

Ha

You seen Millenium dome

Original cost €1 Billion

Difference is, now this has been put into commercial hands who a) sniffed a bargain in the first place and b) know how to run it as a profitable ents venue, said Dome is on to quite a good little earner, iirc now the most popular indoor venue in the world.

What alternative uses are there for CR-DQ? Drag racing?

Isn't it a brilliant example of where all kind of EU debts come from? Who gave these people money and who will pay?

1.) Taxpayer not received anything in return and the €1 billion was cost of building it, cost of running it until given away was another €200 million.

2.) Profitable ents value for performer ....Yup, for the stager of the events .....Yup for the company with the lease..............Not taxable profits so taxman gets zilch

Overall payback is longer than either of will be alive and thats assumming both of us reach a century plus.

Spain hasn't the only follys as UK has even bigger ones at taxpayers expense.

Racedo,

Not entirely the case. I totally agree, original motivation for the tent was a folly. However, the O2 is a huge commercial success and that has benefits for the area and the taxman:

1) All tickets will be vatable at 20% - afaik even corporate boxes are not deductable but please correct if wrong.
2) Huge range of local companies and support services will be used.
3) The complex also includes cinema, restaurants etc.
4) Knock on benefits from hotel stays and so on.
5) Variety of different events and productions - can't assume all will be offshore or foreign acts. The music industry is an export earner for UK is it not?

See thread about White Elephants turned gold in JB - I think the O2 is one, I can't see same being said about any Spanish airports.

Well at least the AVE was only around £10m / mile, compared to £145m for hs2 ph1!

All this talk of white elephants....

Ciudad Real serves as another reminder, let's not go down the same road (or should that be "flightpath"?) with an estuary airport.

Correct but services provided by artist are charged at a cost plus vat that eliminates lots of this so overall net effect isn't as good as expected. Accountants dealing with music industry don't get paid big money for zilch using service companies etc.

That was original payback criteria for Dome and now 12 years later many still not got return on original investment

Cinemas make little money, 70-80 of takings on 1st run movies goes overseas, at about week 3-4 cinemas can keep more but at that stage screens never even hit 40% full over a weekm cinemas make money from selling popcorn / soft drink/ ice cream etc..................couldn't believe the stats but mate worked for Vue cinemas and he confirmed as much and its same for all of them.

Not much as existing venues still exist and spreading it to another makes overall
little impact.

Define export earner ?
Artists live overseas so they can pay little or no tax so its like feeling great about having Amazon based in UK but have you had a look at how much tax they pay worldwide ?

Maybe then we should have let Ryanair run he dome then it would be perfect

Racedo - I think this is a bit of thread creep, but needless to say I don't agree with all your points! Figure I've heard from popcorn is the "food" costs about 0.3p, 1-2p for packaging, the rest is margin. No wonder Stelios' "easy" cinema never "took off" - as his "great" idea was keep it clean, no popcorn!

Some artists have fancy accounting, many don't - after all most of them espouse left wing principles, only one has been heavily targetted for their tax affairs (U2), and they aren't even British, even if their stage shows are UK designed. Without going through each and every one, I put it to you that the majority live in the UK and pay their fair share of UK taxes.

The VAT on tickets is levied on the sales price - so all should go to HMRC. Merchandise is also vatable and a very high margin product. There are a whole load of new hotels both next to the O2 and in the Docklands area which benefit from the combined existence of Excel, the O2 and the airport, together with the Docklands business area itself, and as leisure events peak at the weekends, the two uses can have a double peak, similar to the NEC complex adjacent to BHX - or does that suck money from the local economy too? Again, hotels pay business rates and room rates are vatable, although iirc some will be on corporate expenses so reclaimable, but you could say that about any conference or event.

The existence of the O2 is not a simple matter of displacement - prior to its opening, the largest venue in the world by revenue was the MEN in Manchester, not another London venue. London's other large venues were seriously out of date - Earl's Court was not a big earner (see local debate there) and Wembley Arena was also much in need of a revamp (now done, but capacity still lags well behind O2). It really isn't a zero sum game - create a 20k capacity venue when shows would have previously gone to a 10k venue and you have the opportunity to double revenue. In fact, the economies of scale here work in reverse - the larger the act, the higher the ticket price!

I don't know average occupancy for the O2, but I guess it would indeed give Ryanair a run for their money. Then you have licencing rights for a huge number of DVDs and TV shows recorded there on top. For the best atmosphere, a live shows wants to be a sell out, or as near as possible. Now by all means have a go at the ticket re-sale racket or whatever else, but the O2 is clearly a moneyspinner in its current form, so much so that O2 have sponsored a number of other similar venues built on a similar scale elsewhere (DUB, PRG, BER?), I believe also commissioned by the same entertainment company.

From a promoter's perspective, this kind of venue is preferable to a stadium show, as there is no risk of inclement weather, and much greater control of lighting and acoustics. Overall, a win-win. If you don't like seeing shows in big sheds like these then fair enough, but I really think the economics should be self explanatory.

Stelios's idea never took off because the big 6 Hollywood studios not interested in playing ball. Why would they ?
Stelios could not ever compete with the sheer number of screens the UK main players have and any thinking along that lines would be given option of deal with Stelios and no other chain.

As said earlier in week 1 studios take 70-80 % of box office, weeks 2-3 it gets to 50-50, week 4 its 30-70%.

Stelios wanted to do cheap but why would a studio want its movie to be sold at a sellout for £5 a head when it can do it for £8.

Espousing something is great when you rich, like the have a Prius but use private jet mantra. Few artists pay big amounts of tax despite espousing beliefs, it sounds great that they are "with it" but most of them are full of the smelly brown stuff.

Artists are money grabbers and do everything to get as much as they can, understandable but lets not put them on a plinth.

U2 copped it because they moved elements from Ireland to Netherlands while telling Irish Govt to increase aid.



No chance all VAT goes to Govt as services of Artist are charged against ticket receipts and VAT is an element of that plus add in costs of everything else that are offset against it to pay as little VAT and TAX as is possible.

We only talking of O2 not anything around as Airport and Excel not part of the development, were separate so please lets not try and add them in.


Economics are easy as the cost was paid for by someone else so getting it for SFA means you not concerned about building it.

O2 holds 20k, Wembley holds 12.5k................reality was more events now in O2 than Wembley and Earls court but sorry it ain't a big cash generator to HMG.

O2 gets diddly squat from on sale of concerts, DVDs etc as why would any artist / record company give up their money.

O2 get a fee for staging the concert i.e. hire of a venue, promoters hire it, venues don't get the ticket money and pretty much as little else as possible. It will never pay anything like it cost to put it there as frankly expanding other arenas at a fraction of the cost without public money would be a better idea.

Yup it does provide lots of just above minimum wage jobs but ain't no tax in that and with 100 plus nights a year the residents have a preference for less not more.

Its not UK worst waste of cash as there are even worse mostly from a military perspective but the idea that it will ever pay HMG for what was invested is laughable.