Just before the budget and PMQ's. Everyone will be gearing up for those, meaning the DTV debate may be completely overlooked and not get the attention it probably deserves

Future of Durham Tees Valley airport debate at Westminster Hall this morning:

Parliamentlive.tv - Westminster Hall

Starts at approx. 11:00:26 (time bar at bottom of screen, when clicked on) following debate on the Roll-out of broadband to rural communities in Scotland.

A very good debate and Phil Wilson as far as MPs go was very clued up on the subject matter. All very factual.

Beafer, as usual way off the mark again and despite last weeks Your Questions Answered document answering the land sale issue quite satisfactorily he continues to raise it :rolleyes:

Interesting 30 mins...it was actually just like watching a PPrune DTV thread!!

Not a lot of new information but still dotted the tees(joke) and crossed the eyes...

On we go...

The owners need to eat humble pie and get TUI back free of charge - abolish the pax and if there is one cargo fee.
Local council could sit a HUY buy in a fair share .
Releasing capital.
IF TUI came back year round routes. As pointed out on a different forum and airport Business only won't help numbers .
They need freight too.
And now they have Loganair where are those new routes they implied ?.
When an airport is seeing numbers equivalent to 1970.
( A time of Viscounts and Heralds) - when Palma was exotic and a Tiny 737-200 if you were lucky.
Your doing not doing things wrong but need imho to be open minded and flexible ..
And that's keeping arguments about land use out of it.
Apologies for auto correct plus a quickly typed reply while tired.

Let's open this question , leave aside land use who did What n where.

What could DTV offer, what business in the area could be exploited .

HUY Has a similar setup ( though they didn't scare away holiday traffic ).
But they do have heafty Large Helicopter traffic to the rigs .

EGPO I'm somewhat flabbergasted by your post...yes *if* TUI came back with year round routes that would probably be all well and good, but it's because they couldn't/wouldn't that Peel had to ask them to leave in the first place! And to ask where Loganairs additional routes are in a demanding tone after just two months is ridiculous, give them half a chance!

If you're going to claim we're "doing things very wrong", at least have a full understanding of our situation first!!

With respect I've read my post word for word . At no point do I say not was I suggesting your doing it wrong.
Don't jump down my throat with all due respect because you assume I meant it negatively.
Crikey it was a suggestion as an outsider on what might improve things .
This is why I hardly post on here because I seriously doubt the way people verbally abuse and accuse one another. alleged adults with a common interest in seeing aviation flourish astounds me .

Seriously? :hmm:

Ok humble pie I assure you that was auto corect. And a case of a half typed word :( .

Plus the 'endless amount of UNNECESSARY full stops' in your fragmented comments, surely that can't all be down to 'auto correct' or tiredness!

I think that the majority of us use auto correct but it's still useful to check before posting just in case there are any mistakes or errors in the grammar.

Could some up-to speed kind person please give an update on the progress!

Housing..when?
Change of ownership is it possible?
Further PEEL plans re the master plan.

I know these things take time but as the September passenger and movement figures have shown..the plug hole is widening and will take some filling.

Ok – lets look at the options.

Peel and the Masterplan – basically “sweating the assets” or making the whole site work. Some people seem to regard Peel as the work of the devil, and oft quote Sheffield City as an example why, but I prefer to look at the Liverpool example. Underused sprawling wasteland transformed into a modern airport with extensive non-aviation usage of surplus land. Trust me, as somebody who remembers what it was like before the whole area has been transformed. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Big question is why hasn’t it happened already if the DTVA site is so promising? The need to sell land for housing to fund the development of the rest of the site has always sounded a bit weak to me. As other posters remind us, Peel aren’t short of a bob or two and aren’t shy on investing it when the see an opportunity. This suggests to me that the business case for the rest of the site must be quite weak.

Other issues with the Masterplan? No problem with the housing as such but putting it where it is would seem to constrain the future development of the terminal and other aviation activity, so there’s a question mark there.


So – you’ve got the money from the housing, what are you going to do with it? Attract airlines? Who?


Business flights - see my previous response at #155 around the scope for business flights. So what else?

• IT - TOM operate single a/c bases at comparable airports such as ABZ, NWI and EXT but DTVA don’t seem to think that is the way to make money. TCX don’t seem interested in smaller airports.
  
• LCC – nobody has jumped into Globespans shoes and the major players seem to well established in the North and South of the region (trying to avoid mentioning NCL and LBA!), so you would be looking at a left field player like Blue Air out of Liverpool (a Peel airport). The only other alternative would seem to a CWL/DSA type deal with flyBe – again something Peel are familiar with, but if it was going to happen wouldn’t it have happened by now?
  
• Freight - ideally you’d be tempting a UPS/DHL/FedEx (Amazon?) to set up a hub type operation on the southside, but unless it's just a transshipment point, isn't MME in the wrong place as little local demand - and isn’t Finningley far better placed? More likely is some sort of Carlisle logistics park with just a tenuous aviation link (is there still the planning constraints to aviation related activity?)

So if not airlines, what other aviation activity

• Corporate hangars etc. The Northeast isn’t exactly awash with corporate jet operators looking for a home, so where’s the business coming from? Hangarage for medium/long stay visitors doesn’t seem like a great earner.
  
• Painting/maintenance/scrapping on the southside – if so what? With so much competition you'd probably have to build somebody a facility and pay them to come in. Sycamore might have been a hope but their focus seems to be elsewhere.

And if not the Peel Masterplan – what else? The Mayor? Same questions as before – has he got the money, if he has is an airport the sort of thing he should be spending it on, and what would he do different?

Other operators – who’s out there buying regional airports?

• Scottish Govt/Welsh Govt? seems unlikely….
  
• AMP have just bought Leeds and have a significant shareholding in NCL, so again, unlikely.
  
• The Rigby Group own EXT, NWI, etc. and are rumourred to be looking at BOH – similar airports, so is he a possibility?

But no matter who owns the airport, you come back to the same points - the airport is in a relatively poor, relatively small region with two larger, well-established rivals 50/60 miles away

I’m not reading too much into September’s passenger figures forAberdeen because Eastern Airways has had a lot crewing issues for the last fewmonths, which meant flights got cancelled, lots flights got operated by AISusing a smaller 19 seater BAe Jetstream 32 and some flights went from DTVA via Newcastleor Norwich via DTVA or Humberside via DTVA, you then have the odd divertedflight to take into account, all of this effects the figures.
I'm not 100%sure how some these figures get reported.
It seems that many airports report different figures for thesame routes.
We know the Aberdeen route has too much capacity.
Loganair are offer 1056 seats over 32 flights per week using33 seater Saab 340B. (55,000 seats per year).
Flybe/Eastern airways are currently using a 50 seater Saab2000 & 29 seater Bae Jetstream 41. Offering 20 flights per week on the Saab 2000 isseats 1,000 per week and 10 flights per week on BAe Jetstream 41 is 290 seats per week. The flightsare being operated between Humberside & Aberdeen via Durham Tees valley.

Currently the Durham Tees Valley - Aberdeen routes has capacityfor 2346 seats per week, if continued this world give an annual capacity ofjust under 122,000 seats. It's lot seats to fill even with the extra passenger numbers passengers coming from Humberside and Norwich to make that work in the long run.

I wonder Peel would be interested in buying or taking part ownership of an airline or setting one up. Peel own 3 airports and each them has spare capacity to fill and the land to house an airline. Flybe Group only has a Market Capitalisation of £76 Million and it is already rumoured airport groups are looking at them.

Thanks SWBKCB and RR great posts,as I said it’s always good to get a resume of where we are it.

Whatever and as always,interesting times ahead!!

Re the Aberdeen stats..currently around 1500 per month or 18000 per year.Capacity quoted as approx 122000! Who will lose their nerve first I wonder!!

Yes - fair comment from R-R, two sides to every story, and it's just as valid to say why haven't Peel just cut their losses and dumped the airport, they must see something worthwhile.

I'm still not convinced that the recent terminal developments etc weren't down to keeping KLM happy, they really are crucial.

As in all these things, nothing is ever black and white and there is no silver bullet answer - though the economy of the North East really kicking on wouldn't do any harm!.

Strange no announcement from the airport in the local rags.

This very positive news to read. The real interesting bits for me are:

"The flights are set to operate twice a week for four weeks in July from Belfast International, Humberside, Exeter, Bournemouth, Durham Tees Valley and East Midlands Airport."

"Chris Hagan, Head of Propositions for Super Break, said they were confident the sales of the initial seven departures would be successful, and if this was the case they would not hesitate to extend the programme even further."


"This charter programme will deliver much needed leisure business to Gibraltar. Whilst it may not cure the current gap in seat only capacity it will go a long way to restore business to the local tourism industry."

“Gibraltar is already one of our Top Ten short break destinations and by adding this exclusive capacity we hope to further cement our position as the UK’s specialist Gibraltar short break operator. What is particularly exciting about this programme is that we will be operating services from several UK regions which have never seen direct service to Gibraltar such as North East England and Northern Ireland whilst re-introducing, albeit in a small way, a connection for leisure travellers from areas such as the Midlands who have recently lost their connectivity following the very unfortunate demise of Monarch.”

It will be interesting to which aircraft type Superbreak decide to use. I know Gib airport has a environment which means the airport has set requirements / restrictions on pilot and aircraft type.
I noticed the other airlines mostly use Airbus A320 which fits Durham Tees Valley Airports operation levels perfect.

Gib set for ?Super Break? charter flights next summer ? Gibraltar Chronicle