Talks continue over airport job losses

Potential job losses at Manston airport are still a reality as the statutory consultation with its staff ended this week. Airport chief executive Charles Buchanan confirmed that talks were ongoing after the minimum 90-day period was fulfilled this week.

Meanwhile, the airport will submit a new proposal for expansion to the council's Airport Working Group next month. Campaigners against the expansion oppose Buchanan's plans as the possibility of noisy night flights would affect their sleep and quality of life.

Buchanan understands the concerns but believes the impact of the expansion must be balanced with the economic benefits. Plans to welcome a major airline are still being negotiated.

IoT Gazette 24th Jun 2011

Manston boss claims it wasn't a "sweetener"

Bitter-sweetener

Manston's boss has defended efforts to persuade the government to underwrite the costs of a new service out of the Kent airport. Chief executive Charles Buchanan said subsidies from the public purse were commonplace and it was unfair to describe them as sweeteners.

His comments follow our disclosure that KCC and Infratil, which operates the airport, had sought to persuade ministers to provide £600,000 to underwrite a twice-daily service out of Manston for the first three years of its operation.

An unnamed company is in confidential talks about the service, which could get underway next April. Mr Buchanan said:

"It is unfair to call this bid for support a ‘sweetener’. What are known as route development funds are approved of by the European Commission because they have been proven to build strong regional economies. Public funding for the development of routes between airports is commonplace in Europe and has been, and continues to be, used in the UK. For example, the recent announcement of the start of a new service between Inverness and Amsterdam was on the back of support from Highlands & Islands Enterprise. Support funding was also contributed by the Highland Council, the Highlands and Islands Transport Partnership and VisitScotland."

With the closure of Pfizer, it was even more important to focus on stimulating the east Kent economy.

"Investing in routes from Manston would deliver significant benefit to the area. We recently published an economic impact report undertaken by York Aviation which suggested that Manston could provide direct employment for 2,070 people and a further 1,035 jobs in the wider economy by 2018 through the delivery of our masterplan."

He confirmed that discussions were taking place with other operators interested in providing new routes. According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act by KCC, consultants had estimated the new twice-daily route would create 23 jobs at the airport and a further 133 across the area over the next eight years.

Campaigners opposed to the expansion of Manston argued those figures were modest and raised questions about the value of a public subsidy and the viability of the airport over the long term.

kentonline 16th Jun 2011

Air Anon at Manston

From the once-secret KCC funding bid

There seems to be an endless supply of consultants, ready willing and able to tell the emperor of the day how lovely his clothes are, and how much lovelier the next suit will be.

Next up in line is an outfit called Steer Davies Gleave who aim "to provide unrivaled advice that helps deliver better transportation solutions to everyone, everywhere". And freedom from the nagging pedantry of spell-checkers, presumably.

SDG have made two invaluable contributions to the now widely-read KCC funding bid - a Technical Note on the impact of the new air service, and a Technical Note on the proposed new Thanet Parkway station. Planes and Trains, but no sign of Automobiles yet.

The forecast impact of Air Anon

SDG follow the pattern set by the rest of the bid and kindly spare Air Anon the shame of being associated with Manston airport by scribbling out their name with their blackest marker pen. Curiously, they also censor the names of the two airports that they think are similar to Manston. Dear Reader, I offer you a priceless prize if you can deduce the names of these two airports - here are the clues:

and...

and...

...any ideas? No? Not to worry - the real chuckle value comes when they move away from actual places into the increasingly abstract realm of numbers. The first blooper is pretty elementary:

Mmm... 32,000 doesn't actually happen on that graph. Never mind. Let's see what they make of the two secret comparison airports...

They tot up how many people are in the catchment area (60 minutes drive, for the purposes of this exercise), and it turns out that one is about the same size as Manston, the other is 50% bigger.

Then they find out how many trips everyone in the two catchment areas took in a year (about the same), and come up with trips-per-year figures (which differ by about 50%).

Then they apply the trips-per-year figures to the Manston catchment population and come up with two very different forecasts for the total number of trips per year from Manston. Ingeniously, they use these figures as High and Low figures, rather than accepting they may not have chosen the comparator airports very well.

They then waste a couple of pages flaffing about with a "propensity to fly" multiplier, which eventually makes less than 0.5% difference to the forecast.

The upshot is that they reckon Manston has a population of 275,000 in its catchment area, and Air Anon could attract 119,000 passengers a year, TOPS!

Personally, I think this is a hopelessly crude model - there are many more factors (some of them much more significant) in the decision to fly that are being ignored. The proximity of the destination airport to where people actually want to be, the all-in ticket prices, the days of the week and times of day of the outward and return flights, parking, transfer times, legroom, check-in lead times, airline reliability, etc, etc.

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Dear Reader, you can download your copy of the once-secret KCC Bid Document below, and if you can deduce (or already know) the identities of the airline, or the European hub airport, that are painstakingly blacked out throughout the document, do let me know. Thank you.

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A closer look at that bid

The once-secret KCC funding bid

Bureaucracy being what it is, KCC and Infratil were obliged to spell out in detail the brazen cheek of their cash plea. Do please remember that Infratil is a New Zealand-based investment company, and that whatever profits it can (finally) squeeze out of this lemon of an airport will be going straight back to their antipodean investors, still smarting from years of multi-million pound losses.

Infratil Airports Europe Ltd (IAEL) will progress the introduction of a twice-daily direct air service from Manston (Kent International) Airport to [censored] ...  As with any new venture of this nature, however, the proposed service presents significant financial risks to [censored]. It will therefore be necessary for IAEL to underwrite the service for its first three years of operation, representing a total financial commitment of £600,000. Funding for this purpose is being sought through the Regional Growth Fund.

Translation: We would like you to join us in treating Air Anon as a special case, and exempt them from the everyday commercial realities, risks and pressures that apply to everyone else in Thanet and Kent. We were rather hoping the airport owners would cushion them with a generous sweetener, but Infratil are tired of throwing good money after bad, and obviously don't regard this as a good bet. So we would like a handout.

The commencement of the new air service will trigger the employment and training by IAEL of 23 personnel at Manston (Kent International) Airport. This represents a revenue cost over three years of £500,000, which is being sought through the Regional Growth Fund.

Translation: The airport owners aren't even prepared to pay their own staff. So we would like a handout.

IAEL will fully fund a dedicated bus shuttle service for air passengers between the Thanet Parkway Station and Manston (Kent International) Airport. This service would commence immediately following the opening of the Parkway Station and would represent an ongoing annual revenue cost to IAEL of approximately £100,000.

Translation: Because we're planning to build the Parkway station where there are no other public transport links, Infratil are obliged to pick up the tab for chauffeuring their handful of passengers to the airport. We're only mentioning this in the hope that it is construed as Infratil being generously public-spirited, rather than grudgingly accepting commercial necessity.

As part of the first phase of the Manston (Kent International) Airport Master Plan, IAEL will fund the capital cost of a new Airport Southern Approach Road, to reduce interchange times by bus between the Thanet Parkway Station and the airport terminal and to divert airport-related traffic away from Manston Village. The capital cost of the road has initially been estimated as approximately £6.5 million. It is anticipated that the road would be constructed once throughput at the Airport reaches approximately 3 million passengers per annum.

Translation: Infratil "anticipate" a throughput of "approximately" 3 million passengers only in their wildest forecasts and know, in their heart of hearts, that their £6.5m is safe. But the never-to-be-realised promise makes them look good.

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Dear Reader, you can download your copy of the once-secret KCC Bid Document below, and if you can deduce (or already know) the identities of the airline, or the European hub airport, that are painstakingly blacked out throughout the document, do let me know. Thank you.

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Manston boss and KCC make bid to government for east Kent regeneration cash

The second RGF funding bid

Manston airport's chief executive has called on the Government to recognise east Kent's economic problems when allocating the next round of Regional Growth Fund cash. Charles Buchanan is working with Kent County Council to submit an improved bid after a previous application for £10 million was rejected by the team in charge of distributing the £1.4 billion pot.

The Manston bid was for a parkway railway station serving the airport, an extension of the high-speed rail network between Ramsgate and Ashford, and cash to fund a daily air service to an undisclosed "European hub" airport. But the application was dealt a further blow last week when Lord Michael Heseltine - chairman of the RGF inependent advisory panel - hinted at a roadshow in Margate that Kent bids were at a disadvantage because the county's residents can travel short distances to London for work. Mr Buchanan said:

"The level that Thanet sits on the national indices of deprivation justifies the support we seek. It was made clear to Lord Heseltine at the roadshow that Kent is not entirely wealthy, particularly in the east of the county, and I would hope he has taken that away with him. When dealing with government policy it's normal to have to deal with aggregates and averages; it just depends how local you are developing your policies. The Regional Growth Fund is supposed to support local initiatives, therefore we shouldn't be talking about county averages."

Not a single Kent application was approved following the first round of RGF bids - worth a total of £450m - with only one in the whole of the Kent, Essex and East Sussex Local Enterprise Partnership area being successful. But Mr Buchanan said the Manston bid was submitted before Pfizer announced it will close its site in nearby Sandwich next year, with the expected loss of more than 3,000 jobs. The second round, which aims to allocate the remaining £950m of the fund, opened to bids on April 12 and will close at noon on July 1. Mr Buchanan said:

"We need to take account of the Pfizer situation because the need for economic stimulation in the area is now much greater. We were disappointed not to have been awarded funding in the first round because we thought our bid had merits."

kentnews 20th May 2011