These are the UK’s ‘ghost airports’ – which could come back to life?

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Some UK airports are extremely profitable, with Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted all bouncing back strongly after the Covid pandemic. The UK’s busiest airport, Heathrow, dealt with a report variety of passengers in February: a mean of 200,000 per day.

Yet some smaller British airports don’t even register 200,000 travellers in a yr. Many depend on public subsidies to survive, for social and financial causes. Highlands and Islands Airports, which takes care of 11 airports in Scotland, acquired £56m in subsidy in the newest monetary yr – a whacking £40 for each passenger who used its amenities.

Other airports are not so fortunate. This century, six English airports have closed – most just lately Doncaster Sheffield. Sixteen months after the closing passengers departed, the South Yorkshire airport is the topic of a rescue bid.

So which airports are toast – and which could be revived? These are the key questions and solutions.

The six airports which have closed to business flights this century

Sheffield City

Flights at the first South Yorkshire airport started in 1998 with home hyperlinks to London City, Belfast City and Jersey, and worldwide connections with Amsterdam, Brussels and Dublin. These routes had been progressively cancelled, with the closing flights to and from Belfast City in August 2002.

Could it reopen? No. The website is now a part of Sheffield Business Park.

Coventry

This is a bizarre one. Baginton aerodrome, southeast of Coventry, has been going since 1936. In 2004, the large tour operator Tui determined to base a brand new finances airline, Thomsonfly, in Coventry – and purchased the airport.

The considering was that working from its personal airport could be cheaper and simpler than utilizing Birmingham (13 miles west) or East Midlands (33 miles north).

The amenities comprised a jumble of short-term buildings. Thomsonfly, a belated and botched response to the success of easyJet and Ryanair, duly took off, and over the subsequent 4 years there was fairly a Mediterranean-focused community from Coventry. Even Wizz Air got here in with flights to Gdansk and Katowice. But in 2008, after the High Court turned down plans to construct a everlasting terminal, Thomsonfly went away. Permanently.

Tui now has a flourishing presence at Birmingham airport, although it now faces competitors from easyJet in addition to Ryanair and Jet2.

Could it reopen? Coventry airport continues to perform as a common aviation aerodrome for small plane. There are no plans for a business revival.

Plymouth City

The airport north of the metropolis centre opened in 1925. Like many smaller airports, it was dropped by British Airways throughout a cull on home routes. On the one event I used it, in 2004, the expertise was calm – with solely 9 passengers on my Air Southwest flight to Gatwick (179 miles away) by way of Newquay (39 miles away). Other hyperlinks served Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, Jersey and Cardiff – simply 75 miles away by air, however greater than twice as far by highway or rail. By 2011, the airport had closed.

Could it reopen? Certainly, in accordance to Plymouth metropolis council chief Tudor Evans. Last month he mentioned: “We are a major city, we have ambitions to grow and thrive and an airport must be part of that story.”

Manston

What could presumably go flawed? The former RAF Manston is positioned in the far northeast of Kent, on the Isle of Thanet. That offers Manston airport an enormous benefit: Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Amsterdam are a minimum of 20 minutes nearer to Manston than to Heathrow. A calmly used airport at an excessive a part of Kent, 66 miles from the centre of London, avoids congestion on the floor and in the skies over London – the busiest air-traffic management house in the world.

Access from the capital on the M2 and the A299 (the motorway’s continuation into Thanet) is straightforward. Thanks to the HS1 rail line, Ramsgate station is simply 79 minutes from London St Pancras, with the airport about 5 minutes past.

Yet repeated makes an attempt to run scheduled flights from Manston have failed. In September 2004, I used to be aboard the first EUjet flight, to Dublin; the following July, the airline went bust. Since then Flybe has collapsed not as soon as however twice. But earlier than it did so the regional service axed its routes from Manston to Edinburgh and Belfast.

KLM’s Amsterdam service took off from Manston, however not financially. The closing scheduled flight from Manston departed for the Dutch capital on 9 April 2014. Since then, the airport has had fairly a profitable sideline as a standby lorry park for Brexit-related site visitors chaos in Kent.

Could it reopen? Yes, in accordance to RiverOak Strategic Partners, whose intention is “reviving Manston airport as a successful and profitable airfreight hub, of national significance, with complementary passenger and engineering services”.

Blackpool

The yr 2014 wasn’t nice for small UK airports. As Manston shut down, Blackpool airport on the Lancashire coast was going by way of its dying throes when it comes to scheduled flying. Squire’s Gate airport had an attention-grabbing historical past. Over the years many routes had come and gone together with a frequent Ryanair jet hyperlink with Stansted, a Tui constitution programme to the Med, and a prop-jet connection to Biggin Hill airfield on the London-Kent border. The restoration of direct trains from Blackpool to London seems to have been the dying knell. The final passenger flights departed in October 2015.

Could it reopen? Blackpool is open and thriving for common aviation and enterprise flights. In 2022, it dealt with extra flights than Teesside, Leeds Bradford, Bournemouth and Southampton. But the prospects for extra passenger flights with Manchester airport simply 85 minutes by direct prepare look bleak.

Doncaster Sheffield

RAF Finningley, six miles from Doncaster and 19 miles from Sheffield, closed in 1995. A decade later, it reopened as Robin Hood airport – with Tui as soon as once more a eager proponent of a brand new, low-cost departure level for UK holidaymakers. But Doncaster Sheffield has 4 competing airports inside an hour’s drive. It is 28 miles from Humberside, 38 miles from Leeds Bradford, 46 miles from East Midlands and 53 miles from Manchester. DSA, because it had change into, closed in 2022. The proprietor, Peel Group, mentioned at the time: “No tangible proposals have been received regarding the ownership of the airport or which address the fundamental lack of financial viability.” Promises by the then-prime minister Liz Truss to “protect this airport and this infrastructure” had no impact. The final flights touched down in November 2022.

Could it reopen? Yes. The mayor of Doncaster, Labour’s Ros Jones, has signed a deal for the native council to take over the airport. But it’s not clear which airport operator is likely to be involved in working DSA, or which airways may fly there.

On monetary life help

Each of the nations of the UK has an airport that’s saved afloat by way of heavy subsidies.

Prestwick, Scotland

This great airport, southwest of Glasgow, is widely known as the solely British soil on which Elvis Presley set foot – throughout a refuelling cease for a US navy flight from Germany to the US. For many years Prestwick was a chief transatlantic airport, with British Airways providing each day departures to New York. But its location on the pretty Ayrshire coast is difficult for many individuals in Scotland, and routes steadily eroded. In October 1995, Ryanair took the revolutionary step of opening a brand new home route in Britain, from Prestwick to London Stansted, for £19. Ryanair remains to be the solely business operator at Prestwick, sometimes with two or three flights per day. The Scottish authorities owns Prestwick, and “it remains ministers’ long-term intention to return Prestwick airport to the private sector at the appropriate opportunity”.

Teesside, England

The airport whose railway station had solely two trains per week was a basket case when Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen introduced it back into public possession somewhat than enable Peel Holdings to flatten the website and construct homes. Teesside was the first airport in the UK to scrap the 100ml restrict on liquids in hand baggage. Apart from that, the fundamental pleasure is the twice-daily Amsterdam hyperlink and occasional Ryanair flights. Last yr the airport misplaced £2.26m – representing precisely £10 per passenger.

Cardiff, Wales

Over the previous twenty years, passenger numbers at Cardiff have roughly halved, whereas Bristol airport now handles about twice as many in the similar time-frame. The capital’s airport, southwest of the metropolis, is struggling to entice passengers back to pre-pandemic ranges. While nearly each UK airport grew in 2023 in contrast with a yr earlier, the newest figures from the Civil Aviation Authority present a slight drop at Cardiff – with solely 837,000 passengers utilizing the airport.

Losses totalled £4.5m in the yr to March 2023, with the Welsh authorities making a grant of £5.3m.

City of Derry, Northern Ireland

“CoDA” is an excellent gateway to the metropolis of Derry/Londonderry, in addition to County Donegal in the republic. But as the third Northern Ireland airport, after Belfast International and George Best Belfast City, it has at all times confronted challenges. Keeping the airport going prices over £3m yearly, and the native council is looking for additional funding from Stormont.