Is it even remotely possible that BRS could be paying EZY to fly from Bristol even if they are loss making. So EZY sells tickets really cheap, earns no profit from the flight but BRS that makes money from the ancillary parking etc makes up EZY shortfalls.

This is surely anti competitive but the world of business finance knows how to hide accounts very well.

Tell me that this can never ever happen in UK.
 
Is it even remotely possible that BRS could be paying EZY to fly from Bristol even if they are loss making. So EZY sells tickets really cheap, earns no profit from the flight but BRS that makes money from the ancillary parking etc makes up EZY shortfalls.

This is surely anti competitive but the world of business finance knows how to hide accounts very well.

Tell me that this can never ever happen in UK.

Looking at easyJet's financials last year they made around £6.50 profit per passenger before tax. The way the low-cost airline model works these days is that the likes of easyJet and Ryanair don't expect to pay airports' advertised charges - far from it. There might even be a 'per passenger' charge by such an the airline to an airport.

Depending on how important an airport is likely to be to such an airline and an airline to an airport will determine the type of agreement between the two and the level of inducements. No-one outside the airport and the airline - and even within them it would be a relatively small number of people - would be aware of the commercially sensitive nature of the deal struck. What it would have to do though is satisfy the needs of both parties.

In a private sector airport such as BRS that means achieving a profit commensurate with investment. At somewhere like CWL where the airport is state owned the owners might take a broader view and consider inducements (investment) worthwhile even if at first it doesn't lead to airport profit but stimulates the country's economy.

Prior to the so-called low-cost airline revolution, airports such as BRS were primarily charter airline airports with a small network of scheduled airlines whose frequencies were sparse and fares extremely high. Then an airport would charge the advertised fees to airlines and try to make a profit from that, although car parking and retail would play a small part but, because airport footfall was so low, not a very big part.

Nowadays the deal is that low-cost airlines say to airports they want to do business with, "You provide the airfield and facilities and we'll provide the passengers in high volume". That usually enables both parties to make a profit, with the benefit to communities of more destinations, better frequencies and affordable fares.

Would local travellers want to return to the days of few flights and high fares? I doubt that the airport would survive for very long under that sort of regime.

I'm not sure quite what you mean by anti-competitive in this case, but if you have in mind something along the lines that if I pitched up at BRS with LocalYokel Airlines and its two J41s I would not get the same deal from the airport as easyJet, I agree that I would not. If LocalYokel Taxis wanted to buy a new taxi it would pay more for the vehicle than a major taxi company buying 20 new taxis would pay per vehicle.
 
This is surely anti competitive but the world of business finance knows how to hide accounts very well.

Tell me that this can never ever happen in UK.
I wouldn't be surprised if EZY gets a special deal and most likely for certain routes gets 'help' for an initial period at least.
I don't think it would be classed as anti-competitive unless they were being paid to not operate from a neighbouring airport.
 
So SBAE are not too far off when they claim that non profit making flights in Bristol are being subsidised by the ancillary, read, car parking revenues. To be frank, EZY as a company would not fly me to Bilbao for 50 quid in June, if the airport was not giving them a bung to do so. So it boils down to environmental impacts. The environment suffers as non profit making flights are prepped up by ancillary revenues which would not exist if the flights were not advertised at such low prices. Its a vicious circle and the environment is the victim. So I do understand the SBAE line of thinkng.
 
So SBAE are not too far off when they claim that non profit making flights in Bristol are being subsidised by the ancillary, read, car parking revenues. To be frank, EZY as a company would not fly me to Bilbao for 50 quid in June, if the airport was not giving them a bung to do so. So it boils down to environmental impacts. The environment suffers as non profit making flights are prepped up by ancillary revenues which would not exist if the flights were not advertised at such low prices. Its a vicious circle and the environment is the victim. So I do understand the SBAE line of thinkng.

That's the way that aviation has grown. People want to fly regularly and, because of the low-cost airline revolution, are able to do so often and cheaply (certainly compared with days of yore when the few flights that existed at the likes of BRS were expensive).

I suspect that because of the size and make-up of its catchment BRS pays less in incentives than many other airports would have to do in order to attract the same amount of services. SBAE tries to portray BRS as out of kilter with the regional airport industry in many areas. In only one would they be correct - its success - but they conveniently ignore that.

If the airport is not allowed to expand people will still fly, but they will have to travel further afield to do so. Flights will still impact the environment whether from Airport A or from Airport B or from Airport C. Many in SBAE don't want their area polluted but they are quite happy for other areas to be affected as instanced by their constant mantra about having more flights from CWL instead.

In most areas of business not all parts are profitable. It's invariably the case that some parts of a business 'subsidise' other parts in order to make the whole profitable. For example, supermarkets sometimes sell petrol at a loss in order to attract more customers and thus increase sales and profits in the food and general wares section. It could be argued that the petrol company would not sell so much petrol to the supermarket if the latter did not lower its prices at times to a degree where they were not profitable for it - ergo it's a 'bung' (as you put it).

SBAE has not stumbled upon a state secret. The BRS company accounts have always been publicly available.

For the avoidance of any doubt, I will say again that I'm not in the airline or travel or related industries and never have been. I'm not even a plane spotter and never have been. I don't regard my local airport in the way that football fans regard their favourite football team. I try to be dispassionate and never refer to matters at BRS as 'us' or 'we'. It would not cause me any great inconvenience personally if BRS closed down. I hold no shares in airlines or airports - but not for any ethical reason. When 09 is the active runway I can clearly hear aircraft taking off in the early morning when passing near or above my house. I'm sometimes woken up by the noise

I come to the party with no vested interest in the industry other than as a passenger who over the years has found BRS a useful facility. I fly far less often than I once did and my long-haul journeys are from London airports. Having said all this I believe that a vibrant airport is of great importance to a region and, as with many things in life, there is sometimes a price to be paid.

I bet that some of SBAE members use BRS and I also bet that some are like the actress Emma Thompson. It's all right to fly when they want to because the reason is always a justifiable one, but the rest of us must curb our flying. How many SBAE members I wonder are members of the Wrington twinning association with a French town that came about solely on the back of Ryanair's Beziers route?

There is an amount of hypocrisy in organisations such as SBAE.
 
From Bristol airports point of view they would state they are there to provide destinations and flight choice and that if they didn't provide them another airport would.
Subsidies and perks and discounts are always going to be contentious. Some will say it's distorting the market but for an airport to be successful it needs to attract airlines and then get those airlines to continue expanding even if it's at the cost of another airline that won't offer as much in routes and flights and footfall as certain airlines.

I wonder as well about how many from SBAE would actually use CWL if BRS was capped and if any use it now?
 
From Bristol airports point of view they would state they are there to provide destinations and flight choice and that if they didn't provide them another airport would.
Subsidies and perks and discounts are always going to be contentious. Some will say it's distorting the market but for an airport to be successful it needs to attract airlines and then get those airlines to continue expanding even if it's at the cost of another airline that won't offer as much in routes and flights and footfall as certain airlines.

I wonder as well about how many from SBAE would actually use CWL if BRS was capped and if any use it now?

I've now had a look in detail at Bristol Airport Ltd's Annual Report for the year ending 31 December 2018.

It shows that in that year the company's turnover was £112 million (£100 million in 2017).

This revenue was made up as follows:

Aeronautical revenue (charged to airlines) - £42 million
Car park revenue (charged to passengers) - £35.6 million
Concession revenue (generated from the various concessions operated at the airport) - £31 million
Other revenue - £3.3 million

Profit before taxation was £40.6 million (£36 million in 2017)

Higher passenger volumes meant that aeronautical revenue was up by 8% over 2017 with a consequent 1.9% higher yield (£4.87) per passenger than in 2017. The increase in this yield was generated by improved deals with a number of airlines and annual increases in charges for airlines on longer-term contracts. Aeronautical revenue is still the largest single chunk of the airport's income and is actually more than the airport's pre-tax profit.

All airports need such things as car parking and concessions to support the actual air travel and they are clearly going to be part of the overall profitability package. The more successul an airport is the higher will be both its aeronautical and ancillary income. There is nothing to suggest that BRS is having to pay easyJet or anyone else to fly from the airport. The airport charges might vary from airline to airline and not all might meet the advertised charges, but that's standard practice with customers in most businesses.

As for Jerry's point, I have no idea if any of the SBAE members use CWL now or would use it in future if BRS remained capped at 10 mppa. It would be extremely likely that some would use CWL or any other airport that provided services unable to be provided at a constrained BRS.
 
This revenue was made up as follows:

Aeronautical revenue (charged to airlines) - £42 million
Car park revenue (charged to passengers) - £35.6 million
Concession revenue (generated from the various concessions operated at the airport) - £31 million
Other revenue - £3.3 million

Profit before taxation was £40.6 million (£36 million in 2017)
Interesting numbers!
I had a conversation with someone on ***Links to other Social Media platforms are not permitted***- who basically told me I was talking nonsense about car parking being such an important part of the revenue of an airport these days and just as an important as things like landing fees yet landing fees and the like comprise 37.5% of BRS income while car parking comprises 31% of its income which not an insignificant part of it.
And if BRS are subsidising routes or airlines then it certainly isn't hurting their profits!
 
Interesting numbers!
I had a conversation with someone on ***Links to other Social Media platforms are not permitted***- who basically told me I was talking nonsense about car parking being such an important part of the revenue of an airport these days and just as an important as things like landing fees yet landing fees and the like comprise 37.5% of BRS income while car parking comprises 31% of its income which not an insignificant part of it.
And if BRS are subsidising routes or airlines then it certainly isn't hurting their profits!
If the airport is yielding nearly £5 per passenger from aeronautical charges that does not suggest they are incentivising or subsidising or bunging airlines to a degree that the airport is losing money on that part of its operations in order to do so. It doesn't need to. It might well have done in the early days of Go/easyJet - I don't know - but the size and demographics of its catchment was always going to be attractive once the low-cost industry began to develop.

As I said earlier car parking and concessions are part of an airport's overall package. They are all needed to operate successfully which BRS obviously does better than most of its peer airports.
 
If the airport is yielding nearly £5 per passenger from aeronautical charges that does not suggest they are incentivising or subsidising or bunging airlines to a degree that the airport is losing money on that part of its operations in order to do so. It doesn't need to. It might well have done in the early days of Go/easyJet - I don't know - but the size and demographics of its catchment was always going to be attractive once the low-cost industry began to develop.

As I said earlier car parking and concessions are part of an airport's overall package. They are all needed to operate successfully which BRS obviously does better than most of its peer airports.
I have a friend who works in retail,for a while he worked as a manager in one of the stores that opened when the new eastern airside extension was completed.By the time he left, that one store was turning over more than a million pounds per year. I believe that like a lot of airports Bristol Airport manangement don't charge rent for the floorspace occupied but instead take a percentage of the turnover.I don't know what that percentage is but one would assume it probably is somewhere between 10 and 20 percent. Which explains why you have to take out a second mortgage when you buy drinks and food up there.
Whilst he was working there he was given a tour of the airport by one of the executives,and was told that the business model of the airport was that it was carpark with some shops and restruants with a runway attached.
 
I have a friend who works in retail,for a while he worked as a manager in one of the stores that opened when the new eastern airside extension was completed.By the time he left, that one store was turning over more than a million pounds per year. I believe that like a lot of airports Bristol Airport manangement don't charge rent for the floorspace occupied but instead take a percentage of the turnover.I don't know what that percentage is but one would assume it probably is somewhere between 10 and 20 percent. Which explains why you have to take out a second mortgage when you buy drinks and food up there.
Whilst he was working there he was given a tour of the airport by one of the executives,and was told that the business model of the airport was that it was carpark with some shops and restruants with a runway attached.
I think that's the way even major airports are going - shopping malls whose passengers happen to arrive and depart by air. These days though the one cannot exist without the other at most airports.

I remember the days when BRS was city-council owned and, like the docks (also now a successful venture since being placed in private sector operation), was costing the poor old rate payer, of which I was one, a hefty sum to keep both loss-making facilities open. The airport only began to make progress from around 1980 when the late Les Wilson was appointed MD.

Then airlines were probably paying the publicly advertised rates of charges with the result that there weren't very many and the fares of those that did operate were sky high. The few passengers (compared with today) who passed through the BRS of those days were not enough to make car parking and concessions (apart from a bar and cafe I can't remember much else) any sort of serious contributor to airport income, hence the loss-making.

Interesting numbers!
I had a conversation with someone on ***Links to other Social Media platforms are not permitted***- who basically told me I was talking nonsense about car parking being such an important part of the revenue of an airport these days and just as an important as things like landing fees yet landing fees and the like comprise 37.5% of BRS income while car parking comprises 31% of its income which not an insignificant part of it.
And if BRS are subsidising routes or airlines then it certainly isn't hurting their profits!

When you say subsidising routes what do you have in mind?
 
When you say subsidising routes what do you have in mind?
Things like discounted or no landing fees or parking fees. Paying a certain amount of money per passenger or a lump sum for a certain route or a base.
 
Things like discounted or no landing fees or parking fees. Paying a certain amount of money per passenger or a lump sum for a certain route or a base.
BRS airlines might well pay a discounted sum relative to the publicly advertised charges but that's pretty normal business practice these days where important airlines will add value to an airport's existence. Only at somewhere like LHR might that not be the case.

Because of its proven potential BRS is unlikely to have to discount to the degree that some other smaller airports might have to in order to attract services.

BRS and easyJet had a five-year agreement, that I think has probably now reached its termination, that was obviously mutually beneficial to both parties. We will never know the commercial details but whatever they were have certainly helped the airport's continued profitability each year.

It's common knowledge that the likes of easyJet and Ryanair don't expect to pay published airport charges. BRS seems to have some clout when it comes to Ryanair because in 2013 there was a disagreement over airport charges. In such circumstances Ryanair usually makes a public issue and 'punishes' recalcitrant airports with reductions in its services. It did neither in BRS's case. Instead, it quietly reduced its base size, presumably partly to avoid paying the peak hour charges, but maintained a similar programme (actually slightly enhanced) as the previous summer using aircraft from its other bases. Since then the BRS base has been restored almost to its level prior to 2013.

With a yield that works out at nearly £5 per passenger from aeronautical revenue it does not smack of the airport having to pay airlines to operate. If the airport was losing money in its aeronautical revenue, and only making a profit through car parking, concessions and other smaller revenue streams, there could be an argument that it was paying airlines to operate.

When my BT broadbead contract terminates I never pay the advertised or quoted rate to renew it. I always haggle and invariably finish up paying about a quarter to a third of the advertised price. I've been with them for many years and tell them I shall take my business elsewhere if they don't come up with a new deal that satisfies me. So I suppose some might argue that by giving me a substantial discount BT is subsidising me. BT still makes a profit - £2.6 billion before tax last year.
 
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-climate-change-strike-friday-2899942

School kids are planning another climate change demonstration in Bristol tomorrow with BRS expansion their focus this time. If it's like the last demonstration it will disrupt people going about their lawful business, with buses and other vehicles stuck in traffic jams pumping out more muck into the atmosphere, the very thing these youngsters say they want stopped.

Will they give up their family holidays if it means flying? Will they give up their mobile phones in order to save the energy that making them absorbs? Will they walk a few miles to visit friends or shops instead of asking mum or dad to drive them? Will schools be fining parents for allowing their offspring to leave school to take part in this demonstration as many schools would do if the kids were taken out of school to go on holiday?

The group organising this event says that expansion of Bristol Airport 'will have devastating impacts on the climate'. What, tiny little Bristol Airport will have that effect? Goodness knows then what the new Istanbul Airport and all the new airports in countries like India and China will lead to - China alone is intending to build over 200 new airports in the next 15 years.
 
The world is going mad. All you need some celebrity endorsement of these acts and it becomes legitimate in the eyes of the media and the gullible public.
 
In todays Weston mercury the pension fund have replied to the video. They agree with lots of the points made. I cant copy the report for some reason.
 
In todays Weston mercury the pension fund have replied to the video. They agree with lots of the points made. I cant copy the report for some reason.
It's not the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan that is agreeing with the points made in the teenagers' video. In fact, an OTPP spokesman defends his organisation's environmental policy at its airports.

Some individual teachers and retired teachers in Canada say they want OTPP to invest more ethically (as they would see it). OTPP has more than 191 billion dollars in net assets. Bristol Airport and the other four airports in which OTPP is invested make up a tiny proportion of the Plan's investments.

https://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/...top-bristol-airport-expansion-video-1-6064871
 
Mrs TLY told me that she heard on the local tv news yesterday that North Somerset Council would be making a decision on BRS's current planning applications on 17 July. It's already been put back at least once so I would not confidently expect it to be decided on 17 July. The sooner it is though the quicker the airport can decide its next move if the applications are rejected.
 
I was walking around the Bristol Harbourside on Saurday when I came across a Green Party platform with some of its members handing out leaflets urging people to oppose Bristol Airport expansion.

I had a robust but entirely polite discussion with one of the group. I made the usual points about the airport being an important facility for the region's economy with many jobs resulting; that countries such as India and China are intent on building numerous new airports in the near future; that a stagnant Bristol Airport would simply lead to flights being moved to neighbouring airports with the same amount of emissions; why didn't her party attack those other countries including the USA whose current administration is barely paying lip-service to climate change?; why pick on a small local airport which would result in jobs being created in other areas?; and more but this will do for a flavour.

She gave me various facts and figures about aviation and pollution (which we agreed to differ over) but her main retort seemed to be that the local Green Party has to begin somewhere with its campaign. She told me she is so concerned about climate change that she no longer flies. If true I told her that I respected that and her right to her opinion but that there has to be a balance between the Earth's future and the realities of everyday life.

Actually, in my opinion aviation opposition groups such as this have their place because no airport should be allowed to grow and grow without the necessity being tested. That said, we live in a global society and, if other countries don't curb their aviation expansion, what good will it do the world's climate change and the UK's economy for that matter if we in this country plough a lone furrow?
 

Marvin Rees, Bristol's elected Labour mayor, has returned to the subject of BRS expansion and reiterates his support for it, citing the likely loss of jobs in the region in the future if the planning applications are refused, and the number of people who still have to travel by surface transport from the South West to reach London airports.
 

Upload Media

Upgrade Your Account

Subscribe to help support your favourite forum and in return we'll remove all our advertisements. Your contribution will help to pay for things like site maintenance, domain name renewals and annual server charges.



Forums4aiports
Subscribe

NEW - Profile Posts

9 trips in 9 days done 70 miles walked and over 23-00 photos taken with a large number taken at 20mph or above. Heavy rain on 1 day only
5 trips done and 45 miles walked,. Also the RAF has had 4 F35B Lightning follow me yesterday and today....
My plans got altered slightly as one of the minibus companies had to cancel 3 trips and refunded me but will be getting nice discount when I rebook them.
wondering why on my "holidays" I choose to get up 2 hours earlier than when going to work. 6 trips in 6 days soon coming up with 3 more days to sort out

Trending Hashtags

Advertisement

Back
Top Bottom
AdBlock Detected

We get it, advertisements are annoying!

Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks useful features of our website. For the best site experience please disable your AdBlocker.

I've Disabled AdBlock