A new airport.... South Yorkshire Airport City?

Doncaster Sheffield Airport Strategic Review Announcement​

Forums4airports discusses the latest press release from Doncaster Sheffield airport where the airport questions the future of the airport. The owners of the airport, the Peel Group have announced they are looking at their options as the group has decided the airport is no longer viable as an operational airport. Here's the press release:

"The Board of Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA) has begun a review of strategic options for the Airport. This review follows lengthy deliberations by the Board of DSA which has reluctantly concluded that aviation activity on the site may no longer be commercially viable.

DSA’s owner, the Peel Group, as the Airport’s principal funder, has reviewed the conclusions of the Board of DSA and commissioned external independent advice in order to evaluate and test the conclusions drawn, which concurs with the Board’s initial findings.

Since the Peel Group acquired the Airport site in 1999 and converted it into an international commercial airport, which opened in 2005, significant amounts have been invested in the terminal, the airfield and its operations, both in relation to the original conversion and subsequently to improve the facilities and infrastructure on offer to create an award winning airport.

However, despite growth in passenger numbers, DSA has never achieved the critical mass required to become profitable and this fundamental issue of a shortfall in passenger numbers is exacerbated by the announcement on 10 June 2022 of the unilateral withdrawal of the Wizz Air based aircraft, leaving the Airport with only one base carrier, namely TUI.

This challenge has been increased by other changes in the aviation market, the well-publicised impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly important environmental considerations. It has therefore been concluded that aviation activity may no longer be the use for the site which delivers the maximum economic and environmental benefit to the region. Against this backdrop, DSA and the Peel Group, will initiate a consultation and engagement programme with stakeholders on the future of the site and how best to maximise and capitalise on future economic growth opportunities for Doncaster and the wider Sheffield City Region.

The wider Peel Group is already delivering significant development and business opportunities on its adjoining GatewayEast development including the recent deal for over 400,000 sq ft logistics and advanced manufacturing development on site, creating hundreds of new jobs and delivering further economic investment in the region.

Robert Hough, Chairman of Peel Airports Group, which includes Doncaster Sheffield Airport, said: “It is a critical time for aviation globally. Despite pandemic related travel restrictions slowly drawing to a close, we are still facing ongoing obstacles and dynamic long-term threats to the future of the aviation industry. The actions by Wizz to sacrifice its base at Doncaster to shore up its business opportunities at other bases in the South of England are a significant blow for the Airport.

Now is the right time to review how DSA can best create future growth opportunities for Doncaster and for South Yorkshire. The Peel Group remains committed to delivering economic growth, job opportunities and prosperity for Doncaster and the wider region.”

DSA and the Peel Group pride themselves on being forward-thinking whilst prioritising the welfare of staff and customers alike. As such, no further public comments will be made whilst they undertake this engagement period with all stakeholders.
During the Strategic Review, the Airport will operate as normal. Therefore passengers who are due to travel to the airport, please arrive and check in as normal. If there are any disruptions with your flight, you will be contacted by your airline in good time.
For all press enquiries, please contact Charlotte Leach at [email protected]."

"Not great news for DSA or the region"

Should the government or local council foot the bill and provide a financial subsidy to keep the airport open, thoughts...?

 

Good news for anyone who thinks it should be up to local people to decide whether they have major infrastructure nearby or not.
Being South Yorkshire born and bred, I have followed this story with some interest. Sheffield is currently the biggest city in the country not to have its own airport.
I cannot believe the amount of vitriol that has been levelled at this project from some quarters. Obviously proponents of Leeds-Bradford and East Midlands Airports would rather there wasn't competition nearby (though EMA is actually far closer to BHX than it is to DSA).
But it goes deeper than that. Peel Airports, a private company, threw in the towel in 2022 and said that it was impossible to make DSA profitable. The first assumption is that if Peel couldn't make it work, nobody can. cf Tees-side Airport, which is recovering quite nicely thank you since Peel sold it.
But there is a bigger assumption, rooted in this "Private Sector always does things better" nonsense, which has largely held sway since the Thatcher era. The fact is, the Private Sector is good at sacking people and apparently making money in the short term by cutting costs, but profits always come before everything else, including long-term strategy and, as a result, viability.
Challenge this idolatry (for that's what it is) at your peril. But forty years on from Thatcher flogging off the state assets to her rich friends, people are starting to question whether it has delivered what it promised. As far as UK airports go, the "Free Market" has delivered us a Heathrow which is way overloaded and "needs" (apparently) a third runway, while most of the country would rather fly from their local airport.

Firstly welcome to the forum it’s always good to have opposing views.

Must point out certainly from my perspective there is no vitriol towards South Yorkshire, in fact I was supportive of Sheffield City Airport and fully believed that despite its inherent obstacles more could have been done to make that a genuinely viable aviation proposition with some access to key markets directly from the centre of the Sheffield City Region. Where I can’t agree is that somehow big corp or ‘the market’ is trying to see to it that every passenger must be forced through Heathrow or that the private sector ‘always does things better’. Thats where your argument seems to be misguided though, and indeed it’s a point that’s been raised by proponents of reopening and is way off the mark.

Airlines are private concerns, they are therefore literally only interested in the bottom line. For that reason they put aircraft into airports they know will generate a return. They attempted this at DSA but only TUI saw any success from this. Even if Peel made some poor decisions it wouldn’t have had an impact that changed the fundamental viability of the business, this is evidenced with their work at Liverpool. They’ve probably had some ‘what if’ moments there, but overall they’ve managed to develop a highly successful regional gateway there, it’s undeniable that they had the same vision for DSA. It therefore doesn’t matter who runs DSA, there was a proven lack of viability when it comes to passenger flights and freight flights to any scaleable level that could warrant any investment into improved facilities, this applies not only to the private sector but also the public sector that do need to see a return on their investment regardless of how it’s funded and over what period it needs to prove its worth.

Coppard has clearly outlined that there will only be limited funding available, after a certain period the airport must be able to ‘brush its own teeth’ in his own words. As we’ve seen with other politically motivated projects, Teesside is far from a viable business that could ‘brush its own teeth’ and I don’t believe at the moment that this is likely to be achieved even with the recent re-evaluation of growth forecasts. This doesn’t endear an airport to long term prospects and it actually undermines confidence from stakeholders who need to remain engaged. This includes airlines who must perform their own due diligence.

So going back to your point about airports like DSA being better suited to public ownership, there are interdependencies with private sector investors who are, in your words, ‘good at sacking people and apparently making money in the short term by cutting costs, but profits always come before everything else, including long-term strategy and, as a result, viability.’ What do you think drives airlines? Do you honestly truly believe they fully buy into this public sector ownership of DSA ‘for the people’ when all that drives them is profit and the ability to sack people (and airports!) is something they’re good at? There are no publicly owned airlines in the U.K., there will be no publicly owned airlines in the U.K. The U.K. airport network is private sector led and therefore competitive, only the strongest survive and DSA proved it wasn’t able to deliver the basic requirement for a successful airport and that’s volume of passengers and demand within its catchment area.

None of this is theory, it’s all documented fact. This new lease of life may result in some short term excitement within the industry (but as yet we haven’t seen any), but it’s done so before and didn’t result in a positive outcome. No reason to believe things would be different this time.

One constant theme throughout this saga has been along the lines of 'some freight flights first, then passenger services later'. Leaving aside the passenger aspect, where are these freight flights coming from? Are they representing newly-found business or is it displaced activity from the likes of East Midlands and Stansted?

Well they’ve made some noise about Heathrow’s freight throughput but 90-95% of it comes through belly freight on passenger aircraft and by its very nature cannot be relocated to an airport in Doncaster.

Well they could be, of course. Or the outlook could be much brighter. Uncertainty goes both ways, surely. And no-one would do anything infrastructure related if the timeframe was just a few years. The UK aviation market is 40% bigger than it was in 2005 yet it's been through a global financial crisis, a worldwide pandemic, the biggest war in Europe since WW2 and a messy divorce from its major trading bloc. And yet here we are, a market that's 40% bigger than 20 years ago.

Yes and how many airlines have been lost during that 20 year period? There may have been growth, but that growth has gone hand in hand with an evolving network that significantly reduced the number of airlines and number of departure points so that airports like MAN, LBA and BRS amongst others have seen some pretty solid growth at the expense of airports like DSA, CWL etc. This is indisputable and has been happening over a long time period, hardly ‘just a few years’. DSA was built to capitalise on the projected growth that remained ambivalent to it over the same period!

 

Well they could be, of course. Or the outlook could be much brighter. Uncertainty goes both ways, surely. And no-one would do anything infrastructure related if the timeframe was just a few years. The UK aviation market is 40% bigger than it was in 2005 yet it's been through a global financial crisis, a worldwide pandemic, the biggest war in Europe since WW2 and a messy divorce from its major trading bloc. And yet here we are, a market that's 40% bigger than 20 years ago.

True but you are quoting figures which, albeit with an economic crisis and covid, are mainly from the LCC boom years. The likelihood that UK aviation grows at anywhere near those levels is very slim. There’s nowhere near as many airlines left in the market as there was 20 years ago and from a DSA perspective, why would they take on a huge amount of risk to start ops from an airport which could overlap with services closer to your biggest markets? Even to try steal a march in your competition, you run a huge risk that they go to other airports and on other airlines than travel to DSA.

I’d say at the moment, there’s much more likely to be further consolidation and contraction in the market over the next 5 years than there is growth. Capacity may increase in certain airports but it’ll be very selective and done with minimal risk. Jet2 themselves have cautioned difficult trading conditions for this winter and from a UK economy perspective I’d expect things to get worse again in November for people’s disposable income.

 

True but you are quoting figures which, albeit with an economic crisis and covid, are mainly from the LCC boom years. The likelihood that UK aviation grows at anywhere near those levels is very slim. There’s nowhere near as many airlines left in the market as there was 20 years ago and from a DSA perspective, why would they take on a huge amount of risk to start ops from an airport which could overlap with services closer to your biggest markets? Even to try steal a march in your competition, you run a huge risk that they go to other airports and on other airlines than travel to DSA.

I’d say at the moment, there’s much more likely to be further consolidation and contraction in the market over the next 5 years than there is growth. Capacity may increase in certain airports but it’ll be very selective and done with minimal risk. Jet2 themselves have cautioned difficult trading conditions for this winter and from a UK economy perspective I’d expect things to get worse again in November for people’s disposable income.

Exactly. What DSA needs to be successful as a passenger oriented airport isn’t ’four or five airlines’, it’s another airline like TUI that can make a full commitment to focussing their market growth and reclaiming market share centred on DSA. This would be TUI and easyjet in my view, hence I fully expect that their people are currently engaging with easyjet. There just aren’t the airlines that were around 20 years ago, and most of the big players have ops at surrounding airports that still have capacity to grow and therefore why would an airline find it justifiable (as answerable to the shareholders!) to vastly increase costs for little return. DSA might be nice to get to for people like me who live in the more sparsely populated parts, but we don’t exactly have strength in numbers do we.

This is why I find it incredibly risky and why I think Coppard is being disingenuous by giving the impression that the world is their oyster when in fact they have a very limited number of potential airline partners to work with. This is of course on the basis that airlines haven’t done a u-turn on their previous strategy and now see DSA as a more attractive proposition than LBA, but I just can’t see it. LBA delivers when it comes to filling aircraft. If Scunthorpe was a major city then we might be having a completely different discussion, but it’s not and so we aren’t.

 

And the rest of the money they will almost certainly have to find from Doncaster's tax payers.... (I wonder if anyone has told them they might have to find more yet?)

It was very charitable of you to use the words ‘almost certainly’ and ‘might’ here, I must say.

 

It’s more the fact that the exact same things were being said over 20 years ago. They’re not just similar but the exact same things. People like Coppard remember it, the garage owner won’t remember it. Indeed a lot of the former airport staff won’t. You simply cannot do the same thing and expect different results.

I did see that look north had some form of aviation specialist on who seemed to caution that it won’t be plain sailing, but apart from that we have people who have no clue what they’re talking about influencing others into believing that something might just work next time. There’s been some quite petulant posts about it elsewhere by people who really should know better.

Whole thing is a sham. Some of my Doncaster based friends have a widely different view on the matter and are suggesting that there’s a lot, perhaps a silent majority, who really do not support this proposal.

They certainly were saying exactly the same - it sounds so familiar https://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/414372/finningley-airport-wins-governments-approval

 

They certainly were saying exactly the same - it sounds so familiar https://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/414372/finningley-airport-wins-governments-approval

Yes, it does:

FINNINGLEY FACTS Application submitted in November 1999. - Outline planning permission granted by Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council in April 2001. - Runway, at just less than 3km, is the longest in Europe.​

Clueless nonsense that persists decades later. It wasn’t even the longest within 50 miles.

 

Secondly, please feel free to explain how Teesside is profitable and doing well? Last check it was still massively in debt to money loaned by the taxpayer and was still found to be making a loss (even if the mayor attempted to pull the wool). It’s been discussed on here at great length around the extents Peel went to try and make DSA work, especially as it was in there interest. Stop believing the lies and myths peddled by a mechanic and politicians. Peel may have closed the airport but not without good reason and not without many years of throwing the kitchen sink at it to make it viable. As mentioned above, please feel free to explain what CDC/SYMCA will do differently this time?

Speedbird1 I think you will Qing4theloo said: "The first assumption is that if Peel couldn't make it work, nobody can. cf Tees-side Airport, which is recovering quite nicely thank you since Peel sold it."

Doesn't say that Teesside is profitable, has only said that Teesside is recovering quite well after being purchased.

Teesside is carving a good niche in the aviation market. It is finding its feet and ploughing ahead for a brighter future. Aviation companies based at Teesside have signed 20, 40 plus years deals.


Teesside is coming on leaps and bounds compared to where it was at. Teesside made profits before it was acquired by Peel. During Peels reign it only made profit once and that was only down to compensation paid by airline contract breach.

The first profit in decade was a real event explained by the airport MD in that this was first day to day trading profit. This is before all the accountancy columns taken into account. So a case of building the day to day trading profit to be able to get overall losses down and to turn into an overall profit.

2016-17 (Peel ownership)
Terminal Passengers 125,556 (Lowest Numbers since early 1970's)
Aircraft Movements 21,360
Cargo 8 Tonnes
Revenue £5,396,735
Loss -£2,732,790

2019-20 (TVCA first full year ownership)
Terminal Passengers 139,448
Aircraft Movements 16,389
Cargo 8 Tonnes
Revenue £7,745,305
Loss -£1,737,251

2023-24
Terminal Passengers 231,363
Aircraft Movements 20,480
Cargo 62 Tonnes
Revenue £14,907,440
Loss -£6,625,147


2024-25
Terminal Passengers 226,413
Aircraft Movements 19,584
Cargo 879 Tonnes
Revenue
Profit/ Loss

Hopefully it won't be too long for the preliminary figures for the year to be released.
Then will have to wait until December for full figures to be published.

Since TVCA purchased there has been huge amounts of investment being ploughed into Teesside to turn it around. Now we are seeing private companies paying the airport to build more hangars for them.

 

Speedbird1 I think you will Qing4theloo said: "The first assumption is that if Peel couldn't make it work, nobody can. cf Tees-side Airport, which is recovering quite nicely thank you since Peel sold it."

Doesn't say that Teesside is profitable, has only said that Teesside is recovering quite well after being purchased.

Teesside is carving a good niche in the aviation market. It is finding its feet and ploughing ahead for a brighter future. Aviation companies based at Teesside have signed 20, 40 plus years deals.


Teesside is coming on leaps and bounds compared to where it was at. Teesside made profits before it was acquired by Peel. During Peels reign it only made profit once and that was only down to compensation paid by airline contract breach.

The first profit in decade was a real event explained by the airport MD in that this was first day to day trading profit. This is before all the accountancy columns taken into account. So a case of building the day to day trading profit to be able to get overall losses down and to turn into an overall profit.

2016-17 (Peel ownership)
Terminal Passengers 125,556 (Lowest Numbers since early 1970's)
Aircraft Movements 21,360
Cargo 8 Tonnes
Revenue £5,396,735
Loss -£2,732,790

2019-20 (TVCA first full year ownership)
Terminal Passengers 139,448
Aircraft Movements 16,389
Cargo 8 Tonnes
Revenue £7,745,305
Loss -£1,737,251

2023-24
Terminal Passengers 231,363
Aircraft Movements 20,480
Cargo 62 Tonnes
Revenue £14,907,440
Loss -£6,625,147


2024-25
Terminal Passengers 226,413
Aircraft Movements 19,584
Cargo 879 Tonnes
Revenue
Profit/ Loss

Hopefully it won't be too long for the preliminary figures for the year to be released.
Then will have to wait until December for full figures to be published.

Since TVCA purchased there has been huge amounts of investment being ploughed into Teesside to turn it around. Now we are seeing private companies paying the airport to build more hangars for them.

The problem is the airport has drawn down £63m in loans which need to be repaid. It’s not paid a penny back that I’m aware of as of yet. Therefore it will need long term tenants to help turn revenue to prop up the passenger side which again is falling flat.

The only problem is, the hangars that are been built for the likes of Airbourne Colours are also subsidised and at lower than market rates.

As for the profit been real, come on. We all know it wasn’t a profit in the same sense that normal businesses report profits. It was an attempt to try pull the wool over people’s eyes and to give another mayor playing with an industry he doesn’t understand, the opportunity for a photo call and to try spin a positive.

Teesside is definitely not a success story in the industry at the moment.

 

The problem is the airport has drawn down £63m in loans which need to be repaid. It’s not paid a penny back that I’m aware of as of yet. Therefore it will need long term tenants to help turn revenue to prop up the passenger side which again is falling flat.

The only problem is, the hangars that are been built for the likes of Airbourne Colours are also subsidised and at lower than market rates.

As for the profit been real, come on. We all know it wasn’t a profit in the same sense that normal businesses report profits. It was an attempt to try pull the wool over people’s eyes and to give another mayor playing with an industry he doesn’t understand, the opportunity for a photo call and to try spin a positive.

Teesside is definitely not a success story in the industry at the moment.

No one has said that Teesside is a success story (please tell me where that has been said). People have said that it has turned itself around.

From 19th February 2019 to 31st March 2024 the airport has paid TVCA £6,271,583 in interest on the loans.

There is more than just Airbourne at Teesside. Draken & Willis with their own money are paying the airport to build hangars for them. With Draken tripling in size in recent years and Willis to at least triple their operations.

Since purchase in 2019 there have been 5 hangars built. Another about to go up if it hasn't already started and at least another two to follow soon after. Plus even more expected in the coming years ahead.

Number of jobs across the whole airport land ownership area has increased significantly, since being purchased in 2019. .

 

No one has said that Teesside is a success story (please tell me where that has been said). People have said that it has turned itself around.

From 19th February 2019 to 31st March 2024 the airport has paid TVCA £6,271,583 in interest on the loans.

There is more than just Airbourne at Teesside. Draken & Willis with their own money are paying the airport to build hangars for them. With Draken tripling in size in recent years and Willis to at least triple their operations.

Since purchase in 2019 there have been 5 hangars built. Another about to go up if it hasn't already started and at least another two to follow soon after. Plus even more expected in the coming years ahead.

Number of jobs across the whole airport land ownership area has increased significantly, since being purchased in 2019. .

Regardless as to whether it’s been a ‘success’ by whichever metric you wish to choose, the airport never actually closed under Peel and TVCA own the land outright. I don’t think can be compared to the DSA situation that has, as the time of writing this article least, only one aviation company on site who obviously support reopening for their own vested interest, but the rest appears still to be built on hope and some possible tentative interest for airlines where the regional leaders will not be able to pick up on nuance.

Anyway seems that the CDC still haven’t vote in approval of this, apparently due to the risk of the venture failing and the burden being placed on the tax payers of Doncaster if it fl doesn’t go to plan. Vote scheduled at full council 25th November. Reform hold the majority of seats in the council so will be interesting to see what they do. Hopefully they’ll vote it down and that will be the end of Reform in Doncaster

 

No one has said that Teesside is a success story (please tell me where that has been said). People have said that it has turned itself around.

From 19th February 2019 to 31st March 2024 the airport has paid TVCA £6,271,583 in interest on the loans.

There is more than just Airbourne at Teesside. Draken & Willis with their own money are paying the airport to build hangars for them. With Draken tripling in size in recent years and Willis to at least triple their operations.

Since purchase in 2019 there have been 5 hangars built. Another about to go up if it hasn't already started and at least another two to follow soon after. Plus even more expected in the coming years ahead.

Number of jobs across the whole airport land ownership area has increased significantly, since being purchased in 2019. .

So, given all these aviation related businesses are now set up at Teesside, one of which has a new contract to maintain Jet2 aircraft, and given similar facilities are already available at various other airports too, it's doubtful any of them are likely to move in at DSA. So it'll be interesting to know that aviation businesses the aviation experts at CDC think they'll attract. They seem to have missed the boat in so many ways. Perhaps they think they can entice them to up sticks and move their entire operation to DSA?

 

The political nature of the decision to invest public money in DSA was really put into perspective today by Sir Keir Starmer. At Prime Minister's Questions, in a remark that was completely out of context, he suddenly brought up the subject of Doncaster Sheffield Airport. The message seemed to be to vote Labour if you want huge public sector investments in loss-making airports.

 

The political nature of the decision to invest public money in DSA was really put into perspective today by Sir Keir Starmer. At Prime Minister's Questions, in a remark that was completely out of context, he suddenly brought up the subject of Doncaster Sheffield Airport. The message seemed to be to vote Labour if you want huge public sector investments in loss-making airports.

A desperate attempt to find something 'creditable' achieved by him and his party. It really isn't!

 

Fear not everyone they have Flybe v3 lined up for absolute guaranteed "enter your own word"

 

Fear not everyone they have Flybe v3 lined up for absolute guaranteed "enter your own word"

SYMCA are going to buy them too because they can measure success by a different metric than the private sector. Basically give me a load of tax payers money and I guarantee I can spend it!

 

So, given all these aviation related businesses are now set up at Teesside, one of which has a new contract to maintain Jet2 aircraft, and given similar facilities are already available at various other airports too, it's doubtful any of them are likely to move in at DSA. So it'll be interesting to know that aviation businesses the aviation experts at CDC think they'll attract. They seem to have missed the boat in so many ways. Perhaps they think they can entice them to up sticks and move their entire operation to DSA?

2Excel have said they would want to centralise everything at Finningley. So will that mean them moving operations up from Lasham. So that would be the MRO facility the Mayors have talked about.

Logically I can see 2Excel bringing all their aircraft such as the 727's and Coastguard light aircraft back to one place to begin with. This being the most likely scenario.

But would they really want to pull the Lasham operations up here if there was uncertainty about the longevity of the CDC project. As it would be a very costly operation to move the whole operation up here with staff relocation costs/ redundancy if they didn't want to leave the south. Then if the CDC project failed then that would require another round of costly move packages.

So it might be a case of they wait and see how it all pans out before making the decision to move the Lasham operation.

 

2Excel have said they would want to centralise everything at Finningley. So will that mean them moving operations up from Lasham. So that would be the MRO facility the Mayors have talked about.

Logically I can see 2Excel bringing all their aircraft such as the 727's and Coastguard light aircraft back to one place to begin with. This being the most likely scenario.

But would they really want to pull the Lasham operations up here if there was uncertainty about the longevity of the CDC project. As it would be a very costly operation to move the whole operation up here with staff relocation costs/ redundancy if they didn't want to leave the south. Then if the CDC project failed then that would require another round of costly move packages.

So it might be a case of they wait and see how it all pans out before making the decision to move the Lasham operation.

Agreed, but they were there at DSA previously. Its nowhere near enough to keep DSA afloat even if they do manage a few passenger flights from 2028. They need far more. Its difficult to see where that will come from.

 

Yes as @pug stated in earlier mail I noted too there is another council meeting in November to final sign off ? 2 months way could be interesting

 

It certainly could, especially with current market volatility. It's amazing how some can't see what others can

 

Agreed, but they were there at DSA previously. Its nowhere near enough to keep DSA afloat even if they do manage a few passenger flights from 2028. They need far more. Its difficult to see where that will come from.

It was only the 727's & Coastguard fleets that were at DSA plus the office.

What the talk has been that they will want to bring up their MRO operation from Lasham plus the defence operation. So that would give them a bigger operation at DSA than previously was, thus would bring in greater revenues with operations. But would this be realistic proposition.