A charity set up to provide support to people in the aviation industry has received its first major donation from Bristol Airport. Aviation Action was formed in May and provides a range of support including well-being and mental health coaching, furlough and redundancy guidance, CV writing and...
www.bristolairport.co.uk
This press release concerns a donation that the airport has made to a charity that supports people in the aviation industry.
However worthy that undoubtedly is, I noted what was no more than a throwaway comment in the press release where the airport said that BRS is the fifth largest airport outside London. In terms of passengers numbers it's the fourth largest. Only MAN, EDI and BHX are larger.
BRS overtook GLA last year with CAA stats showing passenger totals at the end of 2019: BRS 8.960 million, GLA 8.843 million. The gap had increased by the end of February this year (the last month where passenger numbers were unaffected by the virus) to BRS 9.011 million, GLA 8.824 million in the rolling 12 months.
We've discussed before BRS's practice of publishing lower passenger numbers than the CAA, because it says it doesn't count certain types of passenger that the CAA does count (under 2s have been the only type in this category that BRS has ever mentioned publicly, so far as I'm aware). Typically, the BRS figures will be circa 100,000 fewer than the CAA's each year. BRS never acknowledges CAA stats milestones either, such as last August when the airport handled over one million passengers for the first time in a calendar month. It's own stats for last August which were never published probably showed a total of just under a million.
Now the airport appears to be downplaying its place in the pecking order of UK airports.
Most airports are anxious to show the world that they are as busy as possible even to the extent of including inbound diversion passenger numbers as their own despite clear CAA notes that they should be allocated to the original intended destination.
I've long been intrigued by the BRS tendency to hide its light under a bushel. Perhaps it takes its lead from the city whose name the airport bears, a city that has an enduring reputation for keeping a low national and international profile and operating beneath the radar. John Betjeman noted that characteristic as long ago as the 1950s when writing about his love for the city. Then again, it's probably an idiosyncrasy of people from the area generally who often like to self-deprecate. To many in the Bristol region the grass is always greener over the hill.
