There is certainly a place for Exeter airport in the region and some competition would do the airport good. Exeter used to always do well at attracting charter ops. Back in the 90s the airport used to offer flights to Toronto.
In fact, EXT had a weekly summer flight to Toronto from the 1990s until 2012, operated by Air Transat for a number of years, usually if not always via another UK airport. In summer 2007 there were two flights each week to Toronto: the Air Transat service to Pearson and a Fly Globespan service to Hamilton, a sort of Ryanairesque version of Toronto.
There is no reason why any other operators offering scheduled flights cannot use Exeter, regardless of Flybe's perspective. Whilst regional airports such as Exeter are never going to be on a par with major airports, competition from other operators for existing or new routes would be very much beneficial to Exeter and the South West, whether this be BMI Regional, Vueling, Ryanair or other operators.
The sooner Flybe have some serious competition at Exeter the better!
I add my welcome to Forums4Airport too, 737 400. It would be marvellous to have more discussion about EXT and the South West peninsula generally.
I agree that competition is always healthy but I can't see EXT supporting a Ryanair or easyJet or Jet2 or Monarch network
and Flybe. The catchment just isn't there. Even without Flybe any major loco network is likely to be limited. I'm not saying that there isn't room for one or two routes such as Ryanair operates at Newquay but anything beyond that seems unlikely to me.
CWL, serving Wales's capital city, and with the weight and support of the Welsh government behind it, has yet to land one of the major lo cos, apart from Ryanair on a couple of sun routes.
I sometimes wonder what position EXT would be in now had it been bought by the owners of BRS, the preferred bidders, when it was sold out of public ownership about a decade ago. There were protests in Devon from business leaders, politicians and others who believed that EXT would be allowed to stagnate. The European Commission became involved because of possible competition issues, leading to the BRS owners withdrawing. Far from wanting to emasculate EXT there is a persuasive argument that the BRS owners would have used EXT as a complementary airport.
EXT's master plan, produced in 2009, included projected passenger numbers for 2015. There were three scenarios:
Low case No growth in new routes compared to the 2007 network and falling charter volumes
Planning forecast The Master Plan was based on this assumption which included Flybe developing a more extensive domestic and international network at EXT; Embraer 195 aircraft assumed to operate on longer sectors including Spain, Southern France, Portugal and Italy; some growth of new services from full service, regional, volume low cost and charter airlines; modest charter growth assuming that Exeter captures a greater share of the market
High case Additional routes and greater capacity aircraft used at Exeter International Airport combined with a more optimistic charter market share
Low case projected 1.415 million by 2015; Planning forecast 1.912 million; High case 1.956 million
So even the low case turned out to be considerably optimistic. EXT is not alone in this. CWL projected 4.5 million by 2015 (currently under 1.4 million) and BRS over 8 million (it is the most accurate of the three as 8 million will be reached this year). The huge recession obviously played its part in suppressing airport growth nearly everywhere and EXT dropped from just over 1 mppa to 700,000. The strength and continued growth of the Exeter city region's economy will stand EXT in good stead going forward but to what degree in terms of new airlines and new routes remains to be seen in my view.
