Four hundred news homes, scores of industrial and office units and a more exclusive passenger image are at the heart of a package to save cash-starved Durham Tees Valley Airport (DTVA).
The rescue plan comes just days after news that DTVA had lost almost £3.6m last year attempting to keep up with its better-connected and more popular regional rival, Newcastle International Airport.
Passenger numbers have continued to fall at Teesside with just 168,000 people using the airport, down 12 per cent on the previous year. One contentious issue has been the introduction of a Passenger Facility Fee. Since 2010 all outbound passengers have been forced to pay a £6 admission fee to the departure lounge.
The levy failed to raise badly needed cash and turnover was down again last year to £4.82m. A report published with the annual accounts, said: “This traffic decline can mostly be attributed to economic uncertainty, slow recovery of the UK economy, exceptionally difficult winter conditions in Northern England which resulted in a number of flight cancellations and a reduced Ryanair route network served from the airport.
In 2012 the airport made an unexpected profit of almost £6.5m, a distortion say bosses, caused by the inclusion of compensation received from a former customer for breach of contract and inter-company waiver.
As part of its turnaround strategy all mainstream charter holiday flights from Teesside will be axed from next summer. Two of the airport’s busiest routes – operated by KLM to Schiphol, Amsterdam, and the Eastern Airways service to Aberdeen – will be protected, as will FlyBe flights to Jersey. The existing terminal will be reduced and remodelled and to cut the number of staff needed to run it the majority of flights will be served by automatic check-in machines.
The author of DTVA Master Plan 2020 and Beyond is strategic planning director Peter Nears. Explaining the 180-page blueprint he said: “Few airports, even the largest, can survive on revenues from passenger traffic alone and many have established wider development platforms to diversify income sources to enable re-investment in airport services.
“The airport has land assets, which provide the development opportunities we must pursue if we are to improve the whole DTVA operation.”
Under the plan, which it is claimed would create 450 construction and more than 3,500 permanent jobs, up to 400 homes would be built on land to the west and north of the terminal, including a field previously earmarked for a business park. Money generated from the housing phase would then be used to pay for nine new hangars, 9,600sq metres of office space and extra industrial units on the existing Northside Employment Park. There would also be an extension to St George’s Hotel.
Persuading the Government to help finance the Southside Industrial Park phase of the scheme will not be easy. It has twice turned down airport applications for Regional Growth Fund money.
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