Bristol (BRS) - General Thread

[Brum X]

Very rural isn't it? Glorious views of the Severn estuary, South Wales including Cardiff and Newport, the Quantock Hills and edge of Exmoor, plus the Mendip Hills much closer across the broad Wrington Vale, all from the western end of the field from where this video was taken - provided the notorious BRS mist and fog doesn't intervene.

What you cannot see from anywhere on the airfield, with the possible exception of the top of the control tower, is the city of Bristol itself.

What i did notice though, especially with the Ryanair 738 and the Thomas Cook A321, they take up pretty much the whole runway before taking off

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It's certainly not a long runway - just over 2,000 metres - although there is something of a foreshortening effect with the video camera on zoom lens. It's not quite as bad as it looks on the video.

Many years ago someone illegally repossessed a Boeing 707 at BRS. In their haste to get off the ground they took out some approach lighting or similar.

 

[superking]

It's certainly not a long runway - just over 2,000 metres - although there is something of a foreshortening effect with the video camera on zoom lens. It's not quite as bad as it looks on the video.

Many years ago someone illegally repossessed a Boeing 707 at BRS. In their haste to get off the ground they took out some approach lighting or similar.

was that the same one that was fully loaded with ammunition,and no body checked aircraft when it came in. I think departure was to one of the middle eastern countries.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I don't know about ammunition. I had the feeling it was snatched back having been impounded at BRS. It was probably 30 years ago. I read an account on the Internet once but all sorts of parameters in Google Search have failed to find anything about it. I suppose I put in the wrong key words.

 

[Kingshat]

Modern airliners use derated take-off thrust to save engine wear. You will see many departures at Bristol use most of the runway, but only because this is the most energy efficient use of the available Tarmac; not necessarily because the runway is short.

 

[Jono577]

View attachment 3912
Came across this the other day when having a bit of a clear out, I would have been about 12 at the time so it would have been a trip out with Mum & Dad to watch the plains (not much to see looking at the time table!!)

Anyway I still go up now and again to this day to watch and pass a bit of time away, how things have changed over the years.

 

[Marko1]

Fascinating reading Jono . It is interesting to see the variety of destinations served back then.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

View attachment 3912
Came across this the other day when having a bit of a clear out, I would have been about 12 at the time so it would have been a trip out with Mum & Dad to watch the plains (not much to see looking at the time table!!)

Anyway I still go up now and again to this day to watch and pass a bit of time away, how things have changed over the years.

Marvellous find. Many thanks for sharing.

Early 70s? I say this because Cambrian Airways became part of British Airways in 1974 but I'm not sure if they continued with their CS flight numbers for a while afterwards.

BY - Britannia Airways
BD - British Midland
DA- Dan Air
EI- Aer Lingus
MH - ? (now Malaysia Airlines)

Dan Air operated some bus stop-type routes, reminiscent of pre-war airlines such a Railway Air Services. I thought that Cambrian did as well at some point but they don't seem to be shown here.

You're right about the paucity of flights, ergo not many passengers using the airport.

Looking at CAA stats through the 60s and 70s, the following were the annual passenger totals in the years 1961-1979 (in thousands): 59, 70, 79, 95, 106, 136, 134, 130, 120, 152, 201, 262, 289, 184, 195, 205, 211, 233, 238.

In the early years BRS handled about the same number in a year as it now handles in 2/3 days in summer.

 

[Sierra3]

Was having a re read of the 2006 Master Plan wording regarding the runway, which was interesting in that the Airport disagreed (in the MP) with the Government White Paper, which did talk about extension.

Anyway I was diverted onto the traffic forecasts, which were also a bit of an eye opener in (with 20:20 hindsight).
Total forecast pax approx. 8.1mppa (2015), big miss there.

By 2015 domestic scheduled was forecast as 1.851m (actual 1224.4m). Assume this was extrapolated from the 2005 figures (top 3 routes 2005 /2015 actual)
EDI 327/ 352 k
GLA 296/ 267 k
BFS 292/ 247 k

Also forecast
Domestic 1.851
Short Haul 4.236m (with 189k connecting to LH)
Long Haul (Schd) 0.383m (with 226k connecting to LH, presumably LH to LH!)
Long Haul (Chart) 0.178m
Short Haul (Chart)1.428m
Total 8.076m

Just for interest looked at
DUB 2004 280k; 2015 378k
AMS 2004 263k; 2015 384k

ATMs 82.6k (actual 54.7k)

Appreciate the market has changed a lot in 10 years - (improved trains, 2008 fin crash, rise of LCC, reduction in Charter) but this is a biggish miss, not only in total pax, ATMs, but also in mix of pax traffic. Almost zero long haul on any type, zero connections, domestic falling etc. Not helped by the massive over run on the 787 and its poorer than predicted runway performance.

Methinks maybe the guiding principle in writing the Plan was attracting full service airlines and developing the Boeing led 'point to point' type mini network of 4 or 5 LH destinations. However if you extrapolate the 2015 'miss' to 2030 you end up with pax numbers in the 10mppa range rather than the 12mppa predicted.

Its easy to be critical looking over your shoulder, but I wonder how the airport management see the future. Will they adapt / amend the Plan, because as things stand Domestic is down by a 1/3, Long Haul is zero, so it must be short haul that's filling the gaps, but not to the forecast numbers. Surely a Plan that misses by about 20% must have to be binned sooner or later, as its not sustainable?

 

[Jerry]

Long Haul is zero

I think they will hope that with Thomson now flying long haul that they will able to prove that BRS can have long haul routes. Does the airport believe it'll have scheduled long haul in S17 or S18? Or will BRS forever chasing long haul and it not turning up? Though the arrival of LCC's on long haul might change that.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The airport master plans that were produced around a decade ago came about following the then Labour government's 2003 white paper on the future of civil aviation. Apart from long haul, the BRS master plan is actually one of the more accurately forecasted/predicted/projected/ guessed plans in terms of overall passenger numbers.

2016 will see around 7.5 million passengers - a rise of nearly 1.2 million in two years - which isn't that far out from the numbers in the plan. Contrast the CWL plan which projected 4.5 million per year by 2015 (actual figure 1.16 million) and the EXT plan which suggested up to 1.9 million by 2015 (actual figure 821,000).

BRS saw rising annual passenger numbers against a falling atm total for several years until a couple of years ago. In one sense this was no bad thing as it suggested a combination of larger aircraft and higher load factors.

The recession played its part, as it did with many regional airports, but BRS was affected noticeably later than most airports and was one of the first to begin to recover. Only 2009 saw a fall in passenger numbers and it is the only UK top 10 airport to see passenger number rises every year from 2010 onwards.

Long haul was undoubtedly impacted by the delay to and less than predicted runway performance of the B 787, something that perhaps the BRS management did place too much emphasis upon. However, the master plan says clearly that there is limited scope for scheduled long haul from BRS suggesting that only New York (then being operated), Washington, Dubai and another US destination which is suggested might be Atlanta would likely to be viable. Long haul charter was a different matter and the airport saw more opportunities there.

Markets, fashions and airlines change and a master plan can never be blessed with 20:20 foresight. For example, the BRS plan suggests Dubai. At the time Qatar and Etihad were not big players around the UK to Doha and Abu Dhabi respectively. If BRS was to gain a MEB3 carrier the smart money now seems to be Qatar to Doha but there still appears to be a very big 'if'.

BRS will have a major challenge when it reaches 10 mppa anyway because its planning consents mean that figure cannot be exceeded. The airport will doubtless try to have the limit raised at some point but it will face a major battle again with the environmentalists and fellow travellers.

It seems the BRS management will continue to push for NYC and ME scheduled routes and (perhaps more realistically) some more long haul charter destinations. Beyond that I can't think why they won't continue with what BRS is very good at: providing an increasing number of routes and frequencies to many cities across Europe including around 15 capital cities, with Bucharest the latest; serving the short haul holiday routes in Europe and North Africa with a fairly high density frequency on the main ones.

It can certainly be argued that there is an over-reliance on low cost airlines, notably easyJet, but that's how the game is these days, especially at the smaller regional airports with BRS being the second largest sub-10 mppa UK airport after Glasgow.

Perhaps the greatest challenge at the moment is finding sufficient space for aircraft to park and passengers to experience at least a reasonable passage through the airport. The airport is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.

 

[Jerry]

BRS has become a very successful short haul LCC airport but it remains to be seen where they can go from there. Long haul wise they are limited by the runway and the fact that only a 787 and maybe a A350 can be used from the runway and not all airlines have those aircraft and from what has been said on this forum runway expansion is probably out of the question. The US east coast and Dubai maybe accessible with narrow bodied aircraft but further out destinations maybe out of reach for BRS. Will be interesting to see where the airport goes in the future.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

BRS has become a very successful short haul LCC airport but it remains to be seen where they can go from there. Long haul wise they are limited by the runway and the fact that only a 787 and maybe a A350 can be used from the runway and not all airlines have those aircraft and from what has been said on this forum runway expansion is probably out of the question. The US east coast and Dubai maybe accessible with narrow bodied aircraft but further out destinations maybe out of reach for BRS. Will be interesting to see where the airport goes in the future.

Although the 787/350 may not be quite the long haul panacea the airport originally envisaged they still appear to have a decent range from Lulsgate. The 787-8 does anyway.

The TUI 787-8 seems to have a range of over 7300 miles with 'typical' seating capacity. Now they obviously wouldn't get that far from the BRS runway but Cancun is over 4,800 miles and TUI appears to be going to operate there non-stop. They operated their B767-300s to Sanford non-stop which is a distance of about 4,200 miles, albeit they were the former First Choice aircraft with 270 seats.

Doha and New York for example are 3,300 miles so they ought not to be a problem.

BRS is certainly restricted to a particular category of wide bodied aircraft but then again it would be unlikely to have the catchment size to support a B 777, 747 or similar on regular transatlantic scheduled services even if it had the physical wherewithal to accommodate them.

 

[Jerry]

Doha

What could also be a factor in a ME3 route is cargo. All 3 airlines ave big cargo operations and BRS doesn't really have a cargo operation.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

What could also be a factor in a ME3 route is cargo. All 3 airlines ave big cargo operations and BRS doesn't really have a cargo operation.

It's certainly a valid point but the same applied for the five and a half years of the CO BRS-EWR service, and CO gave a number of reasons for discontinuing the route but lack of freight capability was not something that was mentioned.

I've had a look at the CAA stats for the calendar year of 2015 to get an idea of the amount of freight carried on scheduled services to/from UK airports. These are the totals in tonnes for all airports that handled more than 1,000 tonnes in the year.

LHR 1.46 million
MAN 89,150
LGW 67,500
STN 52,250
EMA 26,250
GLA 12,400
PIK 9,300
BHX 6,940
LTN 4,100
NCL 3,010
EDI 1,360

EDI had a Qatar route to Doha for the whole of 2015 as well as some transatlantic scheduled services, plus a range of other routes. The fact that it only handled 1,360 tonnes in total during the year poses the question as to how important a freight capability is to airlines when they consider starting services to such places as the ME and NYC from smaller regional airports, although EDI is getting for 5 million passengers a year busier than BRS.

If freight is a defining issue then clearly BRS would have no chance but the fact that the airport has very publicly gone after a ME link means that it must be a consideration they have taken into account.

 

[Ray Finkle]

Of the top 15 UK domestic routes the only two that do not involve London were Liverpool to Belfast and Bristol to Edinburgh.

http://www.anna.aero/2016/09/14/uk-domestic-market-sees-fastest-growth-for-a-decade/

 

[big g]

What could also be a factor in a ME3 route is cargo. All 3 airlines ave big cargo operations and BRS doesn't really have a cargo operation.

BRS has NO cargo facility's and has no plans to offer such facilities. The only "cargo" carried is company mail (COMAIL) and aircraft parts (AOG), all these fall in a different category due to not generatin revenue for the airline.

With regards to infrastructure the 3 new western stand should get underway in the next few months.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

BRS has NO cargo facility's and has no plans to offer such facilities. The only "cargo" carried is company mail (COMAIL) and aircraft parts (AOG), all these fall in a different category due to not generatin revenue for the airline.

With regards to infrastructure the 3 new western stand should get underway in the next few months.

Many thanks for that big g. It does seem that additional stands are needed.

Am I right in saying that BRS's last freight facility was at Avonmouth and that closed a number of years ago?

By coincidence there is a company based at Avonmouth with a large fleet of vehicles that conveys freight from the region to Heathrow and possibly other airports such as East Midlands.

 

[superking]

you are right in saying a freght company in avonmouth do airfreight to eastmids and lhr.used to look after thefleetof trucks that they used. the firms name is skybound.Also dhl do a huge amount of freight to east mids every night. cant remember what year brs closed their operation down but you were right in saying it was closed.

 

[Jerry]

With regards to infrastructure the 3 new western stand should get underway in the next few months.

When will the new stands be operational?