Managing director of regional carrier FlyBE British European Jim French sets out his vision for airport development and access in the UK and calls for a special programme to promote regional routes.
Local airports are a major asset to a region's economy, with every scheduled flight bringing wealth to the area. Potential overseas investors are more likely to invest in UK business and create employment if the town or city in their sights boasts good air, road and rail connections.
As the UK government prepares its long-awaited White Paper on the Future of Aviation, FlyBE British European has laid out its vision of how air transport should progress. Primarily, as an airline which serves 18 regional airports in the UK and with an expanding presence in Europe, we would like to see growth in economic prosperity region-wide and the creation of an environment whereby inward investment is attracted to the regions, shifting the imbalance from the south east. Investors in UK industry need to be assured that their goods, customers and key employees can move freely and easily in and out of the regions and beyond. To achieve this we would like to see a "guarantee of access" into a premier international hub airport, which should be UK-based.
This is why the proposal for a short runway at London Heathrow is a sensible one. At FlyBE we support this proposition, along with additional runway capacity at London Stansted, to support the needs of the point-to-point market. We also see merit in wider opportunities for London City and Gatwick airports.
But this is not enough to satisfy the long-term needs of the industry, and so the government is right to pursue the development of an alternative key regional hub. In our opinion, the best candidate for this is Birmingham International and we support the building of a second runway there. Birmingham is ideally located in the heart of England, and offers strong road and rail connections. It is a feasible alternative for those living north-west of London and as an overflow airport for London Heathrow.
But it is equally important that the UK regions have access to any additional capacity at Heathrow and Birmingham and thus the adoption of ring-fencing slots, as successfully practised in France, is one that we strongly advocate.
Our recommendation is for the creation of a Regional Air Services programme - which would give priorities for slots from the regions. Successful models already exist in Europe, including Ireland, and in the USA under the Essential Air Service Program.
Our proposal is to take a very small proportion of the funding available through government budgets and the European Union and use these funds to support start-up services. The benchmark should be 30-seat regional aircraft.
A minimum of three daily rotations each weekday and one each on Saturday and Sunday should be ringfenced for these regional links. In what we accept is a controversial proposal, these regional slots would be the property of the region, and not the airline which operates them. Once slots have been allocated, the remaining slots can be used on the open market.
We also believe that priority for these 'ring- fenced' slots should be given to airlines that have not in the past abandoned regional services for more lucrative international slots. Over the years we have seen the withdrawal of direct air services linking London to East Midlands, Birmingham, Leeds Bradford, Plymouth and others, in favour of higher revenue earning flights to Europe and beyond. The cessation of regional services has probably been to the detriment of the UK economy as a whole.
Let's consider this: a US entrepreneur looking to build a factory in Newquay in the south-west of England knows he can fly from the USA to Heathrow within three hours on Concorde. What he probably doesn't know is that it will take him six hours or more to travel onwards to the factory site in Cornwall because there is no direct air service from London. Under our recommendations, these regional routes would be flown on a permit basis for an agreed length of time and once they have broken even, a proportion of the profits would be handed back to the government by way of a payback for the initial funding. n
Source: Airline Business
