Newquay airport looses Ryanair flights after air southwest also cut flights.
By joelg1974 | Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 14:06
Ryanair
-
Newquay airport looses more flights, good news if your a seagul!
has pulled out of Newquay with the withdrawal of its summer service to Alicante
in Spain.
The airline
blamed the "continued imposition" of a £5 charge per departing
passenger, imposed by airport owners Cornwall Council in 2006.
Ryanair
apologised and said it would be a giving a full refund to passengers who had
booked flights.
The council
said the tax helped improve the airport which was expected to see more
passengers in the long term.
Dublin-based
Ryanair reduced the number of flights from Newquay after 2006 in response to
the £5 Airport development fee saying it deterred customers.
However it
later reinstated a number of flights and in 2009 it ran 13 flights from Newquay
airport each week to London Stansted, Alicante and Barcelona.
Stephen
McNamara of Ryanair said: "We have had an issue with the £5 fee since it
started.
"It is
a significant fee and we do not believe it should continue."
The move is
the second blow in 2011 for Newquay after Air Southwest announced in January
that it was dropping flights to Gatwick.
Tim Jones,
chairman of Devon and Cornwall Business Council, said it was "bad news for
Newquay and Cornwall and very bad timing with the loss of the Gatwick
link".
But he
believed Newquay had a "strong future" and would recover.
Cornwall
Council said it believed the majority of the airport's users were happy to
contribute to supporting the airport's long term future.
Passenger
numbers increased from 75,000 in 2001 to more than 400,000 in 2007 and are
forecast to grow to more than 1m by 2030.
Why is it
that the Council’s and politicians do not listen? Ryanair have complained about
the fee for 4 years and now the airport has lost its Stanstead flights in 2009
due to them and now the Airports ability to fly to Alicante (which was the only
decent place you can fly to from here anyway) this the same month as Air
Southwest stops its flights to Gatwick. And after that the Council say the
majority of airport users were happy to pay the fee, the point is that the
passengers may not mind paying but Ryanair do and without Ryanair flying to
Alicante the happy passengers will be flying from somewhere else!
1m passengers
by 2030? Where are they all going to be flying to and what on seagul’s?
Comments
Funny a year ago we had the 'use it or lose it' line. Well every flight I've been on to London ever since has been packed, yet both Air SouthWest and RyanAir have deserted us. I agree with @ShayneHouse also - fiver of no fiver if they wanted to fly they would.
By JoJoWoo at 17:19 on 31/01/11
ReportI agree with @Shaynehouse. The fiver is irrelevant. It's never bothered me and the ammount of my mates who've flown from Newquay don't seem to mind.
By irgmcdonald at 13:02 on 30/01/11
ReportRyanair are just making excuses. It's for commercial reasons and the £5 is I'm sure irrelevant.
By Inhouse Studio at 12:20 on 27/01/11
ReportRyanair is an odd company, obviously it's bad news that they've pulled out of Newquay but they seem to be a law unto themselves. I don't think it's Ryanair's place to dictate to an airport what it should do with regard to the extra passenger charge. I'm more disapponted that we've lost the Air Southwest Gatwick route.
By Em_Williams at 21:09 on 26/01/11
Report