Easy BOH -Lyon announced today!
Theres a surprise!

Fantastic news.

Wait let me get this right. So the very routes SOU do want and need, post extension, seem to be appearing at Bournemouth instead?

Don’t worry, this thread has insider information.

On the subject of late SOU arrivals my understanding is, pursuant to the original Section 106 Agreement, that flights should not be scheduled after 2300 however up to 10 flight per month may be permitted in the event of delays. That said my past experience, particularly with Flybe, was that the 10 per month limit was not the reason for diversions. The reason was normally that the airport did not have sufficient staff available to cover a late arrival;

The non availability of staff was invariably caused by NATS ATC. Late attendance was, due to a union agreement, voluntary. This was further complicated by duty time limitations. If one or both were applicable it was a case of trying to call someone in on their day off, which again was not always possible due to minimum off-duty requirements between shift cycles.

In fairness to the controllers, they have a legal obligation to not allow themselves to become fatigued to the extent that it could impact on their ability to do their job. In this respect I know of instances where they declined a request to stay late, simply because after a busy summer's day they were knackered.

From recent NOTAMs issued by SOU that temporarily closed the airport for controller duty breaks, the short staffing situation is even worse than it used to be.

As a contractor NATS have to stay competitive, cannot see that they can do so with having excess staff to cover the possibility of an occasional late arrival.

Maybe time for AGS to go the way that Birmingham did and dispense with NATS in favour of operating ATC themselves at SOU and other locations? They might even be able to entice back the ex NATS SOU controller who now manages the BHX ATC Unit? Additionally there are a number of recently retired SOU controllers/managers who I feel would welcome the short term opportunity to help set up a new ATC Unit.

Ha ha, priceless 🤣

Today was the official opening of the runway extension and it was a pleasure to attend this special occasion. The Spitfire display was fantastic and very fitting with it being the home to this iconic aircraft. Lots to look forward to with the airports future!

🤔🤔🤔

Yeah "fantastic" news for BOH but you do realise that you are posting it on the Southampton thread.

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to celebrate the "fantastic" news with those on the Bournemouth thread instead.

It honestly doesn't matter one way or the other but I personally don't understand why you felt the need to post it here 🤔

On a side note, the use of the word "fantastic" regarding this announcement is a bit OTT in my honest opinion.

But nonetheless it's obviously "good news" for BOH.

With the official opening of the runway extension taking place today (21/09/23) there is some great aerial footage on BBC South Today this evening for those who missed it. Obviously available on the BBC iplayer for those who are interested.

Maybe your ire should have been directed here.

Hopefully the official opening will be followed by some SOU related announcements.

And don't you think that today out of all days would have been the ideal time to make any such announcement.

Until any such announcements are officially made it remains the same, "it is what it is"!

I'm not being pessimistic about my local airport at all, quite the contrary, I'm just being a realist.

Totally agree today was the day to make an announcement, as it never happened what should read into it?

Some fantastic figures recently announced by the CAA too…

July 2023 passenger figures for BOH have increased by 26% on 2022, meanwhile SOU have only increased by 4%.

Oh here we go again, the ridiculous use of the word "fantastic".

I think it's clearly obvious that passenger figures for BOU would have increased far greater than that at SOU. Considering the fact that BOH has far more destinations served by far larger aircraft lead's you straight away to that fact.

And I notice that you have not yet posted this news on the BOH thread. Why I ask myself, is there a personal agenda at play 🤔

and there it is 🎣

Absolutely nothing, takeaway from today was new routes are coming although we just need a little patience and things should become clearer before Xmas, if not earlier

As opposed to the much greater amount of individuals who post nothing but negativity over and over again? I have not seen a single rumour that is anything other than realistic. We hardly have people talking about Emirates commencing flights to Dubai on an A380. Just a low cost operator who by the way already operates route from SOU and has added a few additional routes already and has history of operating from a very similar airport in SEN.

Also, unless you want this forum to
merely be a place where people copy and paste links to the news you might want to get use to rumours.

This thread truly represents the worse in people in society today. Rather than rally around the positive people and build a community we have glass half full malcontents trying to make others feel as sad and lonely as themselves.

Or they could just go the route of having a remote digital tower operated from Swanick like LCY. In fact the master plan shows the tower moving the other side of the runway which is likely to be remote.

ATC staffing levels will be part of the contract between the Airport and NATS. If the Airport wanted a more guaranteed ATC presence after hours it could add that to the contract. Of course it would then have to cover the additional costs for that.

One potential benefit of Remote towers would be that where several Airports have an infrequent need to cover after hours they could share that extra resource with other Airports with a similar need. That's been done elsewhere but the question of staff with multiple ratings for different airports is contentious and we won't know until there is more than one Airport run from the same place whether the CAA will allow it.

The bottom line is something that invariably businesses default to. Do not dispute that the TWR could be remoted to Swanwick but unlike LCY SOU also provides their own in-house APS, so that would also need remoting.

If AGS decided to go it alone with ATC provision maybe BOH could bury the hatchet and start talking to AGS on a cost sharing project to provide APS for both BOH and SOU at one location. Currently there is considerable duplication of resources (with an obvious cost impact) with each unit providing their own service. Going back many years, when the two airports were on much better terms, during the airport redevelopment the radar feed needed to be relocated from the old SOU tower to the current one. To accomplish this a group of the SOU APS controllers temporarily relocated to operate "Solent" from BOH.