My question is not whether Dundee airport should remain open, but whether it should continue to be publicly subsidised to a large degree by the taxpayer when it has a small number of passengers, little or no freight / mail and has good ground transport links to 2 much larger airports relatively nearby.

If RAF training is the reason, then the Ministry of Defence should be paying more and HIAL less cash - if only for the sake of transparency of Govt expenditure. If there's another reason that HIAL subsidises Dundee, I'd be very keen to hear about it...

Then you can start asking: Why have public roads when almost only private cars are using them?

Split the estimater £3m loss over the 35,000 movements and the landing fee would only have to increse by £85 and it would break even??

35,000 movements PA, or 100 per day is impressive, thats a seriously busy GA airport.
I guess the Loganair maintenence hangar brings in a good income as well.

Are there many Bizz jets?

bb

bad bear, 1 landing + 1 takeoff = 2 movements

"Then you can start asking: Why have public roads when almost only private cars are using them?"

What Private cars are using them and paying no road taxes ?

LN-KGL

INV has more than just PSO routes

LTN,BRS, LGW( both EZY and BE) BHX,MAN,AMS,ZRH

And INV is not a remote community just because it is a long way north of the Watford gap

scr1, you have maybe overlooked one word I wrote and it's the word OR. In other words INV is among the airports with vital links to remote communities (on Lewis, Orkney and Shetland). If INV had not had these links, it would clearly have been listed as an airport with less movements than DND.

For those of you that want to know more about the 2012 movements - here is the link:
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/80/airport...ments_2012.pdf

"Split the estimater £3m loss over the 35,000 movements and the landing fee would only have to increse by £85 and it would break even??

35,000 movements PA, or 100 per day is impressive, thats a seriously busy GA airport.
I guess the Loganair maintenence hangar brings in a good income as well.

Are there many Bizz jets?

bb"

Over the weekend just passed: 3 Falcons, 1 HS125, 1 Gulfstream550. Not bad and pretty much all the apron space can handle. The summer flights to Jersey have started as well, using an ATR-42, and are as popular as ever.

Still waiting to hear the outcome of this scoping study which seems to be delayed. It may shed some light on the Airports feasibility.

ATR Visit
 

This weekend is Stobartfest at Carlisle Airport and on the press release along with all the trucks and drivers from the TV show it says an ATR will be present obviously to show they are still serious about starting services from here.

Putneyuk
 

What has ATR visit to Carlisle Airport to do with Dundee ?

There seems to be something of a kerfuffle in the Herald about Cityjet reducing the Dundee route. Is this all just a temporary misunderstanding by someone and poor PR by Cityjet for failing to put out a denial or is there something behind the fuss ?

Update - route goes from 13 round trips per week to 12 per week. Monday loses its 3rd roundtrip at midday and, to even out the schedule, has its early morning flight changed to the same time as other weekdays.

BBC News - Survival plan to secure Dundee Airport future

Some news about DND.

Extract from "the plan"
 

The plan seems to be based on the hope that the London City route continues, otherwise.....


The report confirms the losses at around £2.8m PA, which is about £5000 per take off for LCY

Given there are 7 flights per day from Edinburgh, 6 from Aberdeen and 5 from Glasgow at ridiculously cheap prices the Dundee flights are unlikely to draw customers from far outside the local area.

bb

the report quotes CAA figures show 30,488 passengers for the rolling year to Oct 2013, decreasing at 46.3 %

bb

I'd love to see DND doing well, but with the short runway and other constraints I just can't see it ever competing effectively for commercial pax traffic.

I'm sure the report has been complied by well paid consultants or transport Scotland employees, but large parts of it seem questionable, particularly the stuff about potential routes/operators. They mention airlines that have operated to DND and pulled out recently, airlines that's are struggling to restructure around core bases and other airlines who will surely see the DND market as served by their existing flights from EDI/ABZ/GLA - In the real world most of the carriers suggested are never going to come to DND. Of the 1 or 2 that might, most if not all are low volume/high fare operators which is ironic given the report identifies high fares as the main problem for DND attracting pax!:rolleyes:

Imo this report seems like a bit of an exercise in clutching at straws to justify continuing taxpayer subsidy, plus hundreds of thousands more in route development marketing assistance that will probably yield no results.

If HIAL / Scottish Govt (or even Dundee city council) were to decide to stop subsidising Dundee as a passenger airport, you can bet that politics demands some impeccably good reasons for doing so. Private sector companies have more commercial freedom but public sector would need to show that no stone had been left unturned before the capacity for passenger ops at an airport is "mothballed".

yes - it suits the politicians to have an airport locally - makes them think they are as big as Glasgow or Aberdeen

Dundee can never compete given its lack of major industry (ABZ), a lot of people (LGW) or a tourist/cultural destination (EDI)

given its hardly any distance from any of them its amazing that even private aircraft bother to use it TBH

Never compete? I would suggest now is not the time to be doing anything other than encouraging growth at the airport.
Wheels in motion to tell the world Dundee?s a brilliant place for visitors - Local / News / The Evening Telegraph
V&A AT DUNDEE | MAKING IT HAPPEN

If you only ever measure an airport's purpose and therefore its success by the number of commercial air transport flights it attracts you will eventually paint yourself into a corner.

The Scottish Government was offered an approach to this research project that focused on the potential for developing Dundee's GA activity but seems to have rejected that in favour of yet another analysis focusing on pie-in-the-sky commercial route development.

Dundee has had 3-4000 ATMs a year for much of the last ten years. But its total movements have been pretty consistently 30-40,000 a year for more than ten years. Why build an entire subsidy system to make a handful of Dundee businessmen feel important, when the airport's real success story is the contribution it makes to commercial pilot training and to some extent military training through the cadets contract?

Airports like Dundee will never make money in their own right. That's why they were always in public hands until the Hayekian zealots warped our minds in the 1980s. Dundee's just lucky that it remained in public ownership throughout that period and hopefully will stay that way.

NS

google makes interesting reading. I looked up Northpoint Aviation Services and their intro shows they took "the lead role in preparing the Masterplan at Newquay and assisting Peel Holdings with their plans for Durham Tees Valley"


bb