Manston's dreams and nightmares

"Nostrildamus nose the future"Nostrildamus says:

• Infratil's Charles Buchanan will shortly unveil his plans to stuff our ears with plane noise 24 hours a day.
• He will brandish carrots and sticks as if they were real.
• He will repeat the mantra that the airport will have to close if the proposals aren't accepted.
• He will never say that he will close the airport - far too personal.
• He will want to distract attention from the fact that the closure of the airport is a purely commercial decision, already more than half-made.
• He will want to abdicate responsibility to 'prevailing circumstances', and shift the blame onto an 'uncooperative' local Council.
• He will alarm the Council with the threat of dozens of jobs lost if the airport closes.
• He will cajole the Council with promises of thousands of jobs created if he gets his way.
• He will present the reports he's commissioned as proof of his case, because there is nothing else that supports his claims.
• He will never say that that the night flights he's asking for won't be enough to make the airport break even, let alone become profitable.
• He will say that night flights will be the catalyst that will make the Master Plan achievable and the airport profitable.
• He will never say that every penny of profit will be repatriated to New Zealand in the most tax-efficient way possible.
• He will never admit that the Master Plan, which has missed every significant target and forecast, is a work of unachievably optimistic guesstimation.
• He will muddy the water with promises of flights to New York.
• He will not explain that the carrier (currently called Acer Airways) says it won't exist until 2013 at the earliest.

• TDC's Cllr Bayford is unaware that KCC's Leader Paul Carter is using him as a disposable human shield.
• He will continue to champion the airport as a 'good thing'.
• He will do everything he can to ensure that TDC Labour don't have a free vote on the issue.
• He will continue the fiction that TDC Conservatives will have a free vote on the issue.
• He will continue to use last minute procedural and legal ploys.
• He will seek to skew the public consultation towards a 'Yes' result.
• He will ignore a 'No' result.

• Thanet District Council denies that it holds any records of legal advice on airport planning issues, night flights or the S106 agreement in the last 10 years.
• Nostrildamus has framed copies of the legal advice TDC has received.
• The legal advice confirms that the airport is long overdue for a formal planning application, due to the incremental development over the years.
• The legal advice confirms that the intensification of use resulting from night flights would require a planning application.
• TDC dreads this: it will highlight a decade of slapdash management and craven fawning.
• The airport dreads this too: it would automatically trigger an EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) lasting a couple of years, while the airport continues to lose £5m a year.

KCC, TDC and Infratil want the night flights proposals to be rubber-stamped with the minimum of fuss.

And they don't give a toss about you.

Nostrildamus (D)

Infratil don’t want night flights... they just want the shoulder periods.

Please bear in mind: Infratil have grown into a billion dollar company as a result of being noticeably better at both strategy and risk assessment than most of the other major international players. This does of course mean that they are significantly better on both counts than TDC.

Air freight is carried (mostly) in the belly of large passenger aircraft flying into busy passenger airports. A small proportion of freight arrives in dedicated freight-only aircraft. Manston is the 5th largest airport in the UK for receiving the second type of freight. It's doing the best it can in what is essentially a niche market, but will need some kind of advantage or Unique Selling Point (USP) if it's going to be any better than 5th.

From the airport owner's point of view, day time flights are a breeze whereas night flights are a pain in the backside. Day time flights are effectively unrestricted. Night flights will only be permitted within the framework of whatever S106 agreement TDC can cobble together and make stick. A whole new suite of monitoring, record-keeping and accountability would be triggered by scheduled night flights. The quota count system being suggested immediately makes scheduled nights flights a finite resource and potential limitation on growth and success.

BUT. See that - it's a big but. There are the "shoulder periods" that Infratil have conjured up and woven into their preposterous proposal, which are explicitly excluded from the night flight tallying and monitoring. Flights in the "shoulder periods" don't count as night flights - it's just a longer (unrestricted) day.

Hurrah! Infratil already have blanket permission for late (or should that be "late") arrivals during the night. With the longer day and shorter night that the magical "shoulder periods" bring, the plausible spill-over at either end of the shortened night start to join up in the middle. All of a sudden, Manston becomes (almost) a 24 hour freight airport, which is exactly the kind of USP that they need to creep above 5th in the table of freight importers.

"Nostrildamus nose the future"

Nostrildamus (F)

Infratil don’t want night flights... but TDC’s refusal would provide them with a handy cover story for leaving.

Please bear in mind: Infratil have grown into a billion dollar company as a result of being noticeably better at both strategy and risk assessment than most of the other major international players. This does of course mean that they are significantly better on both counts than TDC.

Infratil's shareholders are pleased with Infratil's ownership and management of Wellington Airport in New Zealand. Building on this success, Infratil made a carefully considered speculative punt, and started buying airports in Europe - Germany, Scotland and England. This turned out to be a mistake.

The least bad mistake was Lubeck Airport, north-east of Hamburg. Thanks to some quite frankly brilliant negotiating, Infratil had the right to sell the airport back to city of Lubeck after a fixed time period if they chose to do so. Time passed, the airport didn't succeed as they had hoped, so they sold it back to Lubeck at cost price, thereby exiting without too much loss or pain. Neat.

Prestwick Airport south-west of Glasgow has also failed to live up to expectations, but unlike Lubeck, there is nobody waiting in the wings who is contractually bound to buy it back off Infratil. Prestwick's vulnerability to the fluctuations in the air passenger market are reflected in the swingeing staff cuts imposed from time to time. Prestwick continues to make a significant negative contribution to the overall negative picture for what's left of Infratil Airports Europe.

Manston is definitely the worst of a bad bunch. Having cost millions, it has lost millions every year since. It has never made a profit. This contrasts sharply with Infratil's overall performance of 18% year on year return, and does not sit happily with their declared aim of achieving a 20% return for their investors. The local New Zealand financial analysts estimate that the European airports transalte into a 5% mark-down on Infratil's share price. This is not something that makes their shareholders happy - Infratil are under pressure.

Infratil need a lot of good news to start happening, and then keep happening, at Manston. They need to recover the purchase price and the subsequent losses (say £20m-£30m) and then start reliably raking in cash if Manston is to compare favourably with their other investments. Failing that, they cannot justify to their investors retaining Manston. The time is fast approaching when Infratil will have to bite the bullet. Selling Manston for a nominal £1 starts to look like an attractive alternative to losing millions a year. It is a fact of life that professional investors like Infratil have long since learnt to deal with: sometimes you just have to cut your losses and walk away.

Realistically, that time has already passed. Infratil's recognition and acceptance of the fact was signalled by the replacement of Matt Clarke (their hand-chosen representative on Planet Thanet) with Charles Buchanan (a PR and communications specialist, and experienced airport vendor) to clean up the remnants. Infratil can tell their shareholders that they've given it their best shot. The aviation industry has been through rocky times: wildly fluctuating fuel prices made business erratic; Icelandic ash clouds forced some customers into the welcoming arms of marine freight. It would be easy and convenient for Infratil to present an uncooperative or unwelcoming local regulatory framework as being the last straw. Bye!

"Nostrildamus nose the future"