Airport News
Below are news items relating to specific airports
Manchester Airports Group to bid for Stansted
MAG says it will make a bid to buy Stansted Airport, teaming up with Industry Funds Management (IFM) - an Australian group - to make the bid. The deal is understood to be worth around £1bn. MAG owns Manchester airport, East Midlands and Bournemouth airports. MAG is currently owned by the 10 council authorities of Greater Manchester - the largest stakeholder being Manchester City Council, which owns 55%. If the deal went ahead, IFM would take a 35% stake in the group. Under the plans, largest shareholder Manchester council would reduce its share from 55% to 35% of MAG. The remaining nine Greater Manchester councils would jointly have a 30% stake, down from 45%. Manchester council would have equal voting rights as IFM.
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A sea of protest against airport expansion across Europe as a new breed of campaigner emerges
Hacan has produced a new report outlining the huge protests against airport expansion that are taking place across Europe. This coming Sunday thousands of people are expected to converge on Frankfurt Airport to mark the first anniversary of the opening of its controversial 4th runway. Every Monday evening, since it was opened in October 2011 by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, up to 5,000 residents have occupied the airport’s terminal in protest against the impact the new runway has had on their lives. Many thousands more are expected at Sunday’s protest. In the last 2 years plans for a 3rd runway at both Munich Airport and at Heathrow, as well as new airports in the Italian towns of Siena and Viterbo, have had to be dropped in the face of public protest. The report found that a new kind of airport protester is emerging across Europe, not only concerned with local impacts such as noise, but challenging the economic need for new runways, and aviation's carbon emissions.
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Gatwick airport to push for 2nd runway – opponents say scheme has repeatedly been found impracticable
Gatwick has declared its intent to push for a 2nd runway and is to start drawing up detailed plans for government approval. The airport says the runway is "affordable and practical" and will allow it to compete with Heathrow. Although an agreement prohibits any new runway opening before 2019 at Gatwick, the airport is to start detailed work on the options, to be presented to the Davies Commission - with a view to getting the go-ahead after the next election. The airport says a 2nd runway would increase capacity to 70 million passengers a year (it handled around 33 million in 2011) and would also mean the construction of a third terminal building. Campaigners warned they would "fight tooth and nail" against any proposal. Brendon Sewill of GACC said: "The option they have got does not make for a good airport, with no proper space for planes and a new terminal between them [the runways] – unless they're demolishing part of Crawley. We are totally opposed on environmental grounds. I don't believe a new runway will be built until Stansted is full, but it's a long way off. They're putting their hat in the ring. They've said they want to sell the airport in 2018 so our guess is that they're aiming to keep the price up for when they sell it rather than building a runway."
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Protesters evicted from homes for demolition for future Nantes airport.
A major evacuation operation by security forces of houses squatted by opponents of the proposed airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, north of Nantes took place on Tuesday morning. Eleven houses and land that had been occupied on the site of the future airport were evacuated without incident by more than 500 gendarmes. At the first home some 150 protesters, some of whom are locals and some anti-globalisation activists, had gathered. Homes that have been evacuated are now subject to enhanced surveillance before being demolished "in the coming days." The airport developers want preparatory work for road improvements serving this "inter airport" between Nantes and Rennes to begin by the end of the year. Work on the airport itself must begin in 2014 for commissioning in 2017. The airport plans have been approved by the State and local socialist party, but the new airport's usefulness is disputed, on economic grounds as well as its environmental impact.
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Surrey County Council rejects new runways at Heathrow and Gatwick
Conservative-led Surrey County Council have rejected plans to build more runways at Heathrow and Gatwick, due to their concerns about the impact on the environment. It will write to the transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, to say it is against airport expansion. Council leader David Hodge said SCC opposed any plans to build additional runways "out of line with the existing county council policy". SCC had a policy agreed in March 2008 opposing expansion unless there was "comprehensive and creditable investment" satisfactorily addressing environmental issues. Lib Dem councillors said the airports have reached their limit. They want alternatives elsewhere to increase in UK airport capacity. Opposition leader Hazel Watson said increased capacity at Gatwick would lead to the loss of "precious countryside" and "irreplaceable historic buildings".
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BAA says Stansted could be run for £5m less per year than they did – to raise its price
BAA has admitted that anyone else could run Stansted for at least £5m a year less, due to lower mangement costs. The information is disclosed in the “information memorandum” sent to bidders for Stansted, which is valued at around £1bn in August. The document is aimed at getting the best possible price for Stansted but one City source said it was bizarre to now be saying this. Stansted had £141.5m operating costs in its most recent year. Ryanair says the reason for the £5 million drop is that BAA has been lumping in expenses from its other 4 airports – Heathrow, Southampton, Glasgow and Aberdeen. The sale document makes out that another operator could get passenger numbers to bounce back to 24.6m by 2019, from 17.1 million this year. Some of the possible buyers of Stansted are MAG and a consortium led by Australasian investment manager Morrison & Co, Citi Infrastructure Partners, Macquarie and Deutsche Bank’s infrastructure arm, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure, JP Morgan and Li Ka-Shing’s CKI .
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Thousand + Frankfurt residents protest in Frankfurt airport – for the 37th Monday – against aircraft noise
The 37th Monday protest at Terminal 1 in Frankfurt airport took place on 8th October, and was attended by well over a thousand Frankfurt and surrounding area residents. They have continued to hold huge weekly protests, at the airport, in their vociferous and determined campaign against the level of noise caused to residents living under flights paths used by the new runway, that was opened last October. There will be a huge protest to mark the anniversary of its opening, on the weekend of 20th and 21st October. There will also be a nation-wide protest across Germany against night fligths, on 24th November. Feeling against aircraft noise, at night especially, is running very high in Germany.
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BAA name to be dropped – as the company is now primarily Heathrow
From today the name BAA will be dropped. Heathrow, Glasgow, Aberdeen Southampton and Stansted Airports will operate solely under their own stand-alone brand. Colin Matthews, said that as over the past few years, BAA has sold its stakes in Gatwick, Edinburgh, Budapest and Naples airports - and now Stansted - the name BAA no longer fits as it does represent all British airports; "we are not a public authority; and practically speaking the company is no longer a group as Heathrow will account for more than 95% of the business.” BAA Ltd has changed its name to Heathrow Ltd. Glasgow, Aberdeen Southampton and Stansted Airports will operate solely under their own stand-alone brand.
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‘Boris island’ is an unfundable white elephant, says boss of Dubai airport
Paul Griffiths, the British boss of Dubai airport, one of the world’s fastest growing airports in the world, says Boris's proposal for an £80 billion, 4-runway hub in the Thames Estuary is “unfundable” and a potential white elephant. (He wants a Heathrow 3rd runway instead, of course). Of the Thames airport plan, he said it requires all the expense of investing in the project without the productivity arising from it, and at the same time you are forcing other airports in the London system to stop growing. Fundamentally, he said, the location of the estuary is wrong, and though transport links to it would be hugely expensive, the airport would not be used. “Many cities have built large airports out of town and as a result have constructed white elephants because they are not successful. Montreal is a very good example.”He will say more at an AOA conference on October 22-23.
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September showed no increase in BAA airport passengers from September 2011, but a fall in ATMs
The September figures for BAA's airports showed no growth in passenger numbers compared to September 2011, and a fall of - 2.3% in the number of air transport movements (ATMs). At Heathrow, the number of passengers was up +0.6%, with ATMs down - 2.3%, so a slightly higher load factor. At Stansted, as usual, there was a fall in the number of passengers, down - 4% on Sept 2011. There were the falls in the number of passengers at BAA's airports of 4.1% in July and 2.0% in August. In September, at Heathrow, Brazil and China passenger numbers increased 14% and 5.9% respectively whilst traffic to and from India fell 7%.(there have been problems with Indian airlines). So the rise in China and Brazil traffic indicates there is no problem for Heathrow in processing more passengers to and from the new economies. Across BAA's airports, domestic air passengers were down -7.2%, but passengers to North America up +3.7% and to other long haul destinations up + 3.2%.