- Ryanair cutting Derry to Faro and London Stansted
- Reducing Liverpool service 5w to 2w
- Airport’s £3.5m subsidy may not be enough
“We’ve got one plan, our Plan A, because this airport is vital, nobody wants to see this airport closed, everyone wants to see this airport stay open to service the North West” – Clive Coleman.
There are fears that that Derry Airport‘s subsidy of €4.2/£3.5m is not enough to keep Derry airport open as Ryanair cut routes to Faro and Stansted from March 25 2017. Ryanair are reducing Liverpool from 5w to 2w.
A debate has followed a presentation on the current business plan for City of Derry Airport at Derry City Council’s Governance and Strategic Planning Committee meeting. Councillors heard that the airport is suffering from the combined toll of Air Passenger Duty, the 15pc fall in sterling, Ryanair’s strategic removal of planes out of Stansted to the mainland Europe, and competition from the Belfast to Gatwick route. The Stansted route handled 126,306 passengers in 2015.
Derry is 100km from Belfast International Airport/Aldergrove and 200km from Dublin airport. Ryanair continued to operate the Glasgow and LIverpool services, while ASL operate eight seasonal charter rotations to Palma de Mallorca for Falcon Holidays.
In recent weeks, the virtual Isle of Man based airline Citywing abandoned plans to open a route to Dublin. Citywing intended to sell tickets on flights operated by Van Air and was to start the link using money from the Westminster Government’s regional air connectivity fund. A spokeswoman for the airport said the route required additional funding, as well as the money from the government source. The impact of the referendum vote in favour of Brexit has led to significant devaluation in the pound sterling. Given that the airline industry operates in euro and dollars, the economics of the route deteriorated to a position which has made the operation of this route commercially difficult.”
Derry handled 284,482 passengers in 2015 but numbers are down 16.8pc in the early months of 2016. Should the decline continue Derry’s numbers will be down to 236,000 in 2016, the fifth successive year of decline, 45pc down on its peak of 438,996 in 2007 and back to levels experienced before the growth spurt in 2005-6 when Ryanair added services to their schedule.
Airport bosses said that subvention from Derry City & Strabane District Council would continue to be necessary for at least the next five years. The airport employs 75 permanent staff and is worth €20.6m to the local economy.
Derry Councillor Paul Gallagher called the airport a vanity project: in the context of the airport as a business the question had to be asked over why there was no exit strategy.
Clive Coleman contracts director at the firm that manages the airport said. It is challenging having one single airline operating all the services into the region. The London route is critical to the region and we are hoping to get PSO subsidies from the Westminster government.
Derry airport, situated on a former military airfield in Eglinton 13 km from Derry City, has enough land and buildings to accommodate 750,000 passengers a year and has a catchment area of 575,000 people. It has seen two capital investment boosts.
- In 1994 £10.5m from the European Regional Development Fund enabled an upgrade of runways, taxiways, access roads, navigation equipment, runway lighting and terminal building which opened in March 1994.
- In May 2006, €15m from the Irish and British governments enabled further runway upgrades and the lifting of the 80pc passenger seat restriction on Ryanair’s Boeing 737s.
Ryanair have been the sole operator at the airport, apart from seasonal charter services, since 2008. Commercial activities date to 1967 when Emerald Airways operated a Glasgow service. Derry City Council purchased the airport in 1978 and for ten years the airport depended on a single commercial service, Loganair to Glasgow to which Logainair added a daily Manchester service in 1989. Loganair continued to operate the Glasgow route as a British Airways franchise until October 2008. In 1995 Jersey European Airways operated a short-lived shuttle link between Derry and Belfast City Airport. Falcon Holidays started holiday charter flights in May 1999. Aer Arann operated services to Manchester and Birmingham. The Stansted service was started in July 1999 by Ryanair when they first came to the airport.
