Durham Tees Valley gets support from top MP William Hague
The shadow foreign secretary noted that the loss of flights to London will not
cause any major damage to the airport’s prospects
Durham Tees Valley Airport continues to provide excellent air links to and from
the north-east of England, in spite of the recent ending of direct flights to
London.
That is according to shadow foreign secretary and Richmond MP William Hague,
who lent his support to the airport on a recent meeting with its director Hugh
Lang.
The former Conservative Party leader revealed that he uses the airport almost
every week, most recently jetting off to Amsterdam, and, though he acknowledged
that the scrapping of direct flights to London was a real blow for
service for both business and leisure travellers.
“The airport has clearly had a huge knock with a loss of the regular flights
to London, which means its passenger numbers are down by more than a half on the
previous year, but its management are determined to keep the place going and to
try to attract new flights – so all of us locally must assist and support that
process,” Mr Hague told the Northern Echo.
At present, flights leave Durham Tees Valley to
Mr William Hague, MP, visited Durham Tees Valley Airport
and everyone should use it, as well as about high speed rail)
candidate for the Darlington constituency, Edward Legard,
local airport, but said that building a new runway at Heathrow would not guarantee
the region access to the capital.
candidate for
flights to London, which means its passenger numbers are down by more than a half
on the previous year, but its management are determined to keep the place going
and to try to attract new flights – so all of us locally must assist and support
that process.
airport were re-established."
so that such things are easier and encouraged."
access for regional airports to the London hub.
Heathrow would attract more international flights rather than regional ones.
international travellers changing planes without contributing to the British economy,"
he said.
said: "If you don’t want a third runway, you are writing off regional aviation.
their transport policy."
development agency (RDA) could enable the airport to thrive. "I don’t think there
are many defenders of doing it in the way Labour has with every part of Britain
having a RDA with a top heavy bureaucracy," he said, "but that doesn’t mean getting
rid of effective economic promotion of the North-East or Yorkshire."
job as an RDA. The Tories completely underestimate the need for a strategic approach
to create employment and support something like the airport."
was – 32.9% lower than in January 2009. The numbers of terminal passengers was
11,434, down – 47.9% compared to January 2009.
(which is almost all of them) the air transport movements are down by 9.9% compared
to Jan 2009, and passengers down – 6%.
High Speed Rail, the journey time from its nearest station (Darlington) to London
is 2 1/2 – 2 3/4 hours. In fact one method of getting to the airport is to take
the train to Darlington and then catch a bus. Why not just stay on the train
and go straight through to London?
Frankly, the Government should BAR internal flights of this nature. Not only
are they inefficient of time, they are totally detrimental to the environment.
for the weekend” is the sort of thing that responsible folk should abhor. And
one wonders just how well he thought through his notion of passengers from the
NE being able to fly to “Gatwick or Stansted to pick up a connection….” – practicality
suggests that it couldn’t be “either/or” and I for one can’t imagine a sensible
payload of passengers, for even one flight a day to each airport, from and to the
NE (and what would the aircraft be doing for the remaining 20 hours of the day?)