Bristol Airport - General Thread

[NOSIGWX]

There appears to be a weekly Pegasus flight this summer according to the acl report. Anyone know where to in turkey and who for? Otherwise increase for ezy and tui decreases for Ryanair

The Pegasus flight operates to Dalaman from July-October.

 

[Marko1]

Tomorrow should have been the start of the summer season

 

[Severn]

Sun 29 Mar 2020
Today, was historic for all the wrong reasons. There were no arriving or departing flights from BOH, EXT, NQY and CWL, not even any business or medical flights.

BRS did see two scheduled flights - a Ryanair return to DUB, and a Loganair to ABZ (which operated inbound via BHX).
There were also six business jet movements including two visiting medical aircraft used for patient repatriation.
A based Loganair E145 also positioned out to ABZ.

SOU was the only other airport in the South/West to see any movements, which saw a flight each to JER & GCI plus a GA movement.

For comparison, LGW only saw 70ish movements today, STN 50 and LTN 30, all quieter than a "normal" winter Sunday at BRS!

Unprecedented times.

 

[forest1979]

Are Bristol housing aircraft as storage? How many could they park I on stands or otherwise?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Are Bristol housing aircraft as storage? How many could they park I on stands or otherwise?

Severn has submitted these two posts - see below - in recent days regarding aircraft parked at BRS.

I don't know whether that's the full complement. No doubt he will confirm or amend and would probably be in a position to answer your query about the total possible parking situation.

Wed 25 Mar 20
Another TOM B738 (G-TAWK) arrived today from DUB making 5x in total.
There is also 16x EZY (5x A319, 9x A320, 2x A321) and 4x RYR B738 on the ground in BRS

Looks like a TOM B787-8 (G-TUIE) is due in tomorrow from Oulu, Finland having flown repatriation flights for TUIfly Nordic. That'll make 5x B738 and 1x B788 of TUIs on the ground in BRS. All ready for the summer season when everything is back up and running?

 

[Severn]

Are Bristol housing aircraft as storage? How many could they park I on stands or otherwise?

26x aircraft at BRS currently

EZY (16)
5x A319
9x A320
2x A321
---
TOM (6)
5x B738
1x B788
---
RYR (4)
4x B738

 

[TheLocalYokel]

26x aircraft at BRS currently

EZY (16)
5x A319
9x A320
2x A321
---
TOM (6)
5x B738
1x B788
---
RYR (4)
4x B738

No departures at Bristol Airport after easyJet grounds flights

Planes are lined up at the airport with 'nowhere to go'

www.bristolpost.co.uk

No departures today. This local rag article features a picture of part of the apron showing some of the parked aircraft.

 

[Severn]

Tue 31 Mar 2020
2x Enter Air B738 arrived today from Bardufoss, Norway (BDU) - one at midday (SP-ENV), one at around 8pm (SP-ENG).
Both are planned to overnight.

 

[Sierra3]

Worth a read, but nothing startling and it misses a few points

Bristol Airport (UK): expansion plans halted for a second time

Bristol Airport's expansion plans have been rejected for a second time, with councillors citing environmental concerns and inadequate public transport access as reasons for refusal. The airport now has six months to decide whether to lodge an appeal.

centreforaviation.com

 

[kraktoa]

In other news, google self suggests articles under its search engine and suggested 2 aviation based articles.

One is that Emirates will be launching Concorde flights in 3 years. By restoring the existing aircraft in Dubai

Second article announcing that Airbus are building a triple decker A380 ultra.

I am presuming these are April fool jokes but catching me out on April 2nd.

 

[Scottie Dog]

Latest on the airport's application to be designated as a co-ordinated aerodrome.

Bristol Airport: designation as a 'coordinated' airport

Proposal to designate Bristol Airport as a 'coordinated' airport and appointment of Airport Coordination Limited as the coordinator.

www.gov.uk

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Latest on the airport's application to be designated as a co-ordinated aerodrome.

Bristol Airport: designation as a 'coordinated' airport

Proposal to designate Bristol Airport as a 'coordinated' airport and appointment of Airport Coordination Limited as the coordinator.

www.gov.uk

BRS is currently Level 3 in summer only (BST) and only between 2300 and 0659 hours. The airport is heavily restricted in its number of night movements and also has strict night noise control quotas, hence the successful application a few years ago for partial Level 3 co-ordination.

The application for Level 3 for the entire summer period 24 hours a day was first made public a few months ago before the local authority rejected the airport's planning application to enable it to expand to 12 mppa.

Given that rejection (although the airport can still appeal the decision to the Planning Inspectorate) and the likely negative impact on air travel from Covid-19, at least in the next year or two, one wonders whether BRS's reasons for seeking full Level 3 in summer will still be relevant at the moment.

Interesting list of the Level status of all European airports. The UK is at the bottom of page 4 and on page 5.

http://www.euaca.org/FTableList.aspx?list=87

 

[Jerry]

They have more photos available on their facebook page.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1245760300294512645

 

[kraktoa]

The airport officially close the doors to the main terminal from tomorrow.

Any remaining staff and arriving and departing passengers will enter and leave through Aviation House.

I think first time the main terminal doors have been closed. Ever.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Worth a read, but nothing startling and it misses a few points

Bristol Airport (UK): expansion plans halted for a second time

Bristol Airport's expansion plans have been rejected for a second time, with councillors citing environmental concerns and inadequate public transport access as reasons for refusal. The airport now has six months to decide whether to lodge an appeal.

centreforaviation.com

Thank you for posting that. Some relevant points are made although it’s not the first time that I’ve found CAPA to be slightly misleading, confusing or incomplete, perhaps surprisingly for a such a well-regarded organisation.

Before touching on one or two points in the article, the question clearly needs to be considered whether it is now likely that the airport will pursue an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate.

With the doom and gloom floating around regarding the future of aviation some might think an application to increase the airport’s annual passenger numbers is now unnecessary. That might be short-sighted though. Things might look bleak at the moment but in, say, five years from now the situation might be completely different and the airport might then regret it hadn’t done more to raise its current 10 mppa limit. The airport still has over five months in which to launch an appeal, with the subsequent planning enquiry likely to take even longer to determine following the COVID-19 disruption.

Bristol as a city and city region has a track record of economic strength going back centuries.

It seems to weather severe recessions by reinventing itself. In the Great Depression of the 1930s its myriad small industries, plus its major tobacco, aircraft-building, chocolate, wine importing and docks sectors, enabled it to survive far better than many regions, with numerous workers flocking to the city from other parts of the UK to find work. By the first few decades after WW2 it had become more heavily reliant on such things as finance and insurance. They are still important but other sectors such as creative media, legal services, aerospace and one of the most productive digital technology clusters in the country have been added.

CAPA points out that Bristol still has a booming economy and along with Manchester outpoints London on several economic indicators. Bristol is also still the only city outside London that gets less back from the Exchequer than it pays, so indirectly is subsidising other areas of the country.

The previous major recession of the ‘noughties’ saw BRS affected later than most regional airports, for a lesser period, and it began to recover quicker than most airports.

So all this suggests that when the aviation sector does begin to recover from the COVID-19 effects BRS is likely to be amongst those airports leading the way, so perhaps a continuing commitment to expansion will be seen to have been prescient.

I’m not sure that Bristol as a city dominates its region in the way that CAPA suggests. Its airport is clearly the major regional one for the South West. It’s also true that Greater Bristol provides around 25% of the GDP of the Government Region of the South West (a huge region geographically that includes Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Bristol, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly with a combined population in excess of five million). Whether that adds up to dominance is arguable.

Bristol is certainly the largest city in the South West government region with a municipal population approaching 500,000, but that’s only part of the story because the city boundaries have not expanded for nearly sixty years in the way they regularly did prior to that as the urban sprawl pushed beyond Bristol's then boundaries. The urban sprawl has continued to inexorably push outwards into neighbouring authorities, principally the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire, giving an unbroken combined urban population within and without the city of 700,000-plus.

Going back to the CAPA article, its assertion that the rejected expansion only amounted to refusing permission to build a new car park is a considerable over-simplification.

The article also states, “While Bristol commands its region, its airport has always had plenty of competition – from Exeter, Southampton, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Birmingham, and even London Heathrow.” LHR seems to have been put in as an after-thought whereas in reality it sees nearly as many South West travellers each year as the combined annual passenger throughput of EXT, SOU, BOH and CWL. The previous CEO at BRS when interviewed for an aviation magazine article two or three years ago said unequivocally that LHR was the ‘major threat’ to BRS growth, not any other regional airport.

I don’t know whether the following part of the CAPA article is a misprint: “The airport’s passenger traffic has grown consistently since 2010 but at varying rates, usually low ones apart from the period 2015 – 2017, and traffic has been falling during the last three years.”

If it’s not a misprint it’s wholly misleading. On the one hand it states that passenger traffic has grown consistently since 2010 then says that traffic has been falling during the past three years. What it should have said is that the rate of growth has been falling over the past three years.

That was anticipated in the remarkably accurate passenger projections set out in the current master plan (published in 2005) - for two obvious reasons. The greater the annual number of passengers the harder it becomes to reach the apples growing higher up the tree; the greater the base figure the lower is the percentage needed to provide the same or even a higher actual passenger growth rate. For example, at 6 mppa a 10% growth will provide 600,000 extra passengers. At 9 mppa only a 6.66% growth is needed to generate 600,000 extra passengers.

CAPA thinks a stagnated BRS could play into CWL’s hands. The article asserts that CWL has been growing ‘at a greater pace’ than BRS. In percentage terms perhaps but it was from a very low base.

In fact, from CWL’s low point in 2014 when it handled 1.020 million passengers (down from its 2007 peak of 2.1 mppa) it has grown by 62.2% to the end of 2019, an increase of 635,000 passengers. During the same period BRS has seen a lower percentage growth of 41.5% but that translates into an additional 2.626 million passengers.

CAPA goes on to say, “Cardiff has retained its long haul Doha service (Qatar Airways), which is continuing to take transfer passengers via that Middle East hub, but not point-to-point traffic because Qatar is closed to foreigners” (that situation has changed since the CAPA article was published).

The article continues, “That fact alone will play into Cardiff’s hands when normal service is resumed in the wake of the virus’ massive outbreak, and possibly also those services from Birmingham and the south coast airports (assuming the latter survive)”.

I really can’t see any logic in that, especially the reference to south coast airports. It’s a poorly constructed sentence. Is the author saying that Qatar at CWL will benefit CWL to the detriment of BHX and the south coast airports, or that Qatar at CWL together with BHX and the south airports will impact negatively on BRS?

 

[Marko1]

The airport officially close the doors to the main terminal from tomorrow.

Any remaining staff and arriving and departing passengers will enter and leave through Aviation House.

I think first time the main terminal doors have been closed. Ever.
[/QUOTE

Isn’t there a nightly Dublin flight starting tomorrow with Ryanair ?

 

[Jerry]

CAPA thinks a stagnated BRS could play into CWL’s hands. The article asserts that CWL has been growing ‘at a greater pace’ than BRS. In percentage terms perhaps but it was from a very low base.

CWL would no doubt benefit but by how much is anyone's guess especially as the main airline at Bristol hasn't shown any interest in Cardiff.

I also think that the last few years has shown that CWL and EXT in particular aren't really any competition for BRS. Yes both have grown and attracted extra flights from Ryanair and TUI but neither have attracted a base from Ryanair and TUI expansion amounts to 1 and a half aircraft and both have failed to attract any sort of presence from Easyjet and I personally get the feeling that the current crisis will only make both less competitive against Bristol.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Marko

There is certainly an evening Ryanair DUB shown for today on the airport website arrivals/departures pages.

The airport carries this latest press release on its website.

Bristol Airport Operational Update
Created: 1st Apr 2020

Bristol Airport remains open with a reduced number of commercial/scheduled flights as well as assisting with repatriation, medical, military and other essential movements. We continue to work closely with airlines, the Government, Department for Transport and Public Health England on the latest information and guidance for customers.

Safety and security of our customers and staff is our key priority at all times and enhanced cleaning procedures and self-distancing policies are in place to keep our customers and colleagues safe, whilst providing these vital air links.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

CWL would no doubt benefit but by how much is anyone's guess especially as the main airline at Bristol hasn't shown any interest in Cardiff.

I also think that the last few years has shown that CWL and EXT in particular aren't really any competition for BRS. Yes both have grown and attracted extra flights from Ryanair and TUI but neither have attracted a base from Ryanair and TUI expansion amounts to 1 and a half aircraft and both have failed to attract any sort of presence from Easyjet and I personally get the feeling that the current crisis will only make both less competitive against Bristol.

The particular point I was trying to establish is why the author of the CAPA article, when summarising the possible fall-out from a constricted BRS, believes that the Qatar service at CWL will, as he puts it, 'play into Cardiff's hands'. He makes a bold statement without any attempt to provide evidence to justify his assertion, or even to spell out exactly what he means.

It was one of a number of instances where, in my opinion, the article was high on rhetoric but low in substance, as I tried to illustrate with examples in my post #1358 on the previous page.

As for CWL and EXT being competition for BRS, in the May/June 2017 edition of Airports of the World magazine Robert Sinclair the previous BRS CEO, when asked by the magazine's writer how 'Cardiff's desire to pull in more passengers' would affect BRS, replied, "I don't see them as a major threat, not to the same extent as Heathrow. That's not to say I don't see them as a threat at all."

I wonder if the current senior management team takes the same view about LHR. Fairly recent utterances about reclaiming passengers who use LHR would suggest that it does. At least five million annual journeys from/to the South West* are made via LHR, far more than would likely to be the case via CWL even if it was APD-free, so in that sense LHR is more of a 'major threat' to BRS. However, nearly all the long-haul through LHR would not be viable at BRS so the latter is really targeting some of the LHR short-haul passenger traffic.

At the moment all future aviation speculation is predicated on the pre-COVID-19 situation. Non-one can accurately foretell how matters will develop post-COVID-19.

* The South West is a large geographical area but it's still likely that a good proportion of these passengers would be travelling to/from BRS's primary catchment, given its pre-eminent position with regard to the region's population size and economy.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Marko

There is certainly an evening Ryanair DUB shown for today on the airport website arrivals/departures pages.

The Ryanair DUB-BRS-DUB did operate this evening according to the BRS website arrivals/departures pages.