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...?

 

If those 130,000 petition signees travel 10 times each year it still will not reach the pax figures required. The airport will reopen but if they manage to get commercial flights, they will last less than 2 years.

 

Laughing with you there @Seasider definitely not at you!

 

Well a councillor put this statement onto FB stating it’s a done deal today a d posting photos of him in the airport in front of TUI bannners

Get ready for boarding all flights from Doncaster Sheffield Airport

Today, Councillors were invited to Doncaster Sheffield Airport to get a closer look at the airport as it stands today and receive a briefing ahead of Full Council on Thursday.

I'm pleased that Mayor Ros Jones and the Reform leadership have announced today that they are in agreement on the need to approve the borrowing at the Full Council meeting, green lighting the Council's funding commitment to reopen the airport. As a Labour Councillor I will be voting in favour of the borrowing.

130,000 people signed a petition to get our airport reopened. There are huge economic and social benefits to reopening our airport. Thursday will be another milestone in the journey to get flights overheard once more.

#SaveDSA#SaveDSA

That councillor has been wined and dined at DSA and given a token hi vis to pretend to work at check in or some other such stereotypical airporty position. They’re saying it’s a done deal because effectively it is, there’ll be some barbed jabs at Ros Jones tomorrow from opposition councillors but really it’s all meaningless platitudes, they have to vote in favour through fear of becoming a pariah.

However, and as seasider alludes, this isn’t a ‘done deal’, it’s basically an exercise in making the full council complicit in the idiocy so there’s no single point of blame when it does run out of cash. ‘Unanimous support’ means that nobody will take the flack when it does fail, but blocking it now will potentially be political suicide, least that’s how Reform see it. I’m not convinced, Reform are a plague that won’t be killed off by preventing DSA from opening, but they’ll think that’s the case now.

@Egyptian King i have seen a post by Nick Fletcher that has since been removed where it included screenshots of an alleged WhatsApp conversation between a senior council exec and someone presumably involved in the private sector interest. Are there more than one text messages each? They’ve since been removed.

A suggestion that all might not exactly be aligned tomorrow;

Senior Reform councillor steps down from leadership after fallout with party leader

A senior Reform UK councillor on the City of Doncaster Council has resigned from the party’s local leadership group, citing disagreements over the direction taken by the leader.

www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk

This is a councillor who, as member of the scrutiny committee, has reason to have reviewed the ‘full business case’ and claims it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Good that he’s left fracturing the Regurge majority, but also suggests that not all are as poised to vote in favour as I may have been led to believe. I still think the majority will wave it through, but there’ll be blows traded tomorrow certainly.

 

As expected full council have voted in favour of the loan of £57m at a number of 42 to 9 in favour.

Next steps will be that the council will need to publish the subsidy, after this is published any intend to challenge has to be raised within 30 days of the subsidy being published. I suspect the council will want to do this swiftly so as to avoid further delay.

I’ve had a few interesting discussions very recently, all I can say is I’m still 99.9% certain this will fail either before the airport becomes fully operational, or very soon afterwards. People who really know what they’re talking about will be a little miffed to say the least with this, but they too were expecting it as part of the show.

 

Scandalous situation that a City and region are being fed what they are.

 

Mechanic celebrating in full, credit where credit is due to the guy.... maybe aviation expert is his new venture in life? The circus continues.

 

Mechanic celebrating in full, credit where credit is due to the guy.... maybe aviation expert is his new venture in life? The circus continues.

Yep when you consider how this has evolved it is an amazing situation. Wouldn't you just love to see the fully costed business plan that has been hidden away. What does even more surprise me is that so many 'councillors' - supposedly in positions of responsibility - can vote on something as massive as this without seeing said business plan and not being able to form a balanced view. That's politics I suppose!!
By 'eck they better make it work!!!

 

They may be rejoicing now but it will not last long. When the other airports object it will delay the actual opening and cost them a lot of money to defend.

 

They may be rejoicing now but it will not last long. When the other airports object it will delay the actual opening and cost them a lot of money to defend.

Well it’s not even the objection from other airports costing them money to defend. It’s the likely delay that will result if there is a case to answer to that will add to the costs and possibly require a further full council approval to provide more. This is what Grant Thornton have warned against, the need to have ‘off-ramps’ to avoid the escalation of costs, and presumably the sunk cost fallacy.

I’ve been in meetings with some very senior people in recent days, unrelated to this topic, but the topic has come up and it’s really not a good look here. The people blindingly following this thinking it’s going to be a success are fools, and the councillors who have voted in favour of this without seeing the full business case are incompetent at best. Interesting to note that one of the people who have had sight of the business case has stood down from Regurge (which is good obviously) and presumably voted it down today. Speaks volumes really.

 

Well it’s not even the objection from other airports costing them money to defend. It’s the likely delay that will result if there is a case to answer to that will add to the costs and possibly require a further full council approval to provide more. This is what Grant Thornton have warned against, the need to have ‘off-ramps’ to avoid the escalation of costs, and presumably the sunk cost fallacy.

I’ve been in meetings with some very senior people in recent days, unrelated to this topic, but the topic has come up and it’s really not a good look here. The people blindingly following this thinking it’s going to be a success are fools, and the councillors who have voted in favour of this without seeing the full business case are incompetent at best. Interesting to note that one of the people who have had sight of the business case has stood down from Regurge (which is good obviously) and presumably voted it down today. Speaks volumes really.

Coppard has issued a statement moaning about the Tories and Reform Councillors who voted against, claiming this makes it more difficult to attract investors, and suggesting they should have their party whip withdrawn. That would suggest perhaps that Councillors were under instruction to vote in favour and that it wasn't a free vote.

Frankly, time will show they were the only ones with any common sense.

 

Coppard has issued a statement moaning about the Tories and Reform Councillors who voted against, claiming this makes it more difficult to attract investors, and suggesting they should have their party whip withdrawn. That would suggest perhaps that Councillors were under instruction to vote in favour and that it wasn't a free vote.

Frankly, time will show they were the only ones with any common sense.

Well it just goes to show the true motives behind getting this across the line. Economic growth and a better future for Doncaster and South Yorkshire it certainly ain’t! It’s about showing a vocal minority that they will deliver whatever they’ve asked for, regardless of how much it’s going to cost them - and cost them it will much sooner than they probably anticipate.

Apparently Ros Jones said today that the vote wasn’t about confirming the reopening of DSA, it was about supporting the loan to enable reopening work to continue. Interesting choice of words.

 

What an absolute waste of money.

 

Local people should be contacting those responsible enmass for some serious answers the problem is they won't answer the people who have done this and see them as a major inconvenience and have been utterly dismissive towards people who have had the sense to question the sheer lunacy of putting £200M plus into this with basically no chance of success.

Seeing people as the problem who have genuine concerns in this debate is plain wrong it isn't even a debate it is dictatorship on a grand and ugly scale. Everyone involved should be ashamed that the general public know basically nothing about the project apart from a heck of a lot off money is being thrown at it.

 

Local people should be contacting those responsible enmass for some serious answers the problem is they won't answer the people who have done this and see them as a major inconvenience and have been utterly dismissive towards people who have had the sense to question the sheer lunacy of putting £200M plus into this with basically no chance of success.

Seeing people as the problem who have genuine concerns in this debate is plain wrong it isn't even a debate it is dictatorship on a grand and ugly scale. Everyone involved should be ashamed that the general public know basically nothing about the project apart from a heck of a lot off money is being thrown at it.

Well according to Ros Jones propaganda out of 8600 responses to the questionnaire only 7% were against the reopening of the airport.

For a start this was a basic Microsoft forms questionnaire, but secondly it was incredibly suggestive. I wonder what the motivations behind releasing it were, I suspect we know the answer to that.

Also they have asked councillors to hire in favour of something most of them haven’t been able to view the detail of. In essence they were told by their respective leaders to back it no matter what, a kind of ‘trust me bro’ situation. This is wrong, but it’s politics and we chat kid ourselves that this doesn’t go on in far less high profile cases. Where the contention is is that a Regirge councillor who was on the scrutiny committee actually resigned from Reform to be an independent because he felt so strongly against the airport after having seen the business case and seeing that it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. For all we know it could just have lots of pretty pictures and talk of it being a global hub, we just don’t know. Whatever it is there’s clearly a reason that goes beyond commercial sensitivity because sensitive information can easily be redacted. What are they trying to hide?

The spin machine will be going into overdrive these next few weeks, I’ll expect to see more jobs advertised as they look to acquire licences etc. Will they make good on their word and complete another ‘soft market test’ soon as they have everything in place? Would be interesting to see whether there would be any takers this time around, I suspect if there are it would be at a significant financial loss to the council!

 

A slightly more balanced report by the media BBC

The particularly interesting point

“
Councillors were also warned that if the operating costs of the airport rose by another 20% within the first three years, it could close again.

Conservatives councillor Nick Allen voted against it and said: "This is like taking out a credit card to pay someone's mortgage, with no benefits at the end."

Well it looks like it will close then. And one councillor has a sensible hat one, well done for having the courage to speak out.

 

Thanks @Guppy, it’s definitely sought to polarise at council level and as we’ve seen, it’s even more apparent that this is being used as a political device and not a genuine belief in the economic growth of the region.

A slight thread creep perhaps but it looks like yesterday has had at least one positive impact on the local Regurgers..

Reform UK leader resigns after being defeated in council chamber by his own party

Reform UK Councillor Guy Aston has stepped down as group leader on the City of Doncaster Council, claiming he has received “vitriolic texts that border on abuse” from members of his own party.

www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk

Something tells me there’s a lot more to this.

Apparently the airspace issue has been downplayed a bit by CDC/FlyDoncaster to ensure they’re working to the deadlines as more recently set out. Best case for airspace according to the CAA estimates is that it won’t be implemented until late 2029, and this of course assumes that it all runs without any objections.

As with the case of HUY there is nothing stopping the airport reopening in Class G with an ATZ, but they themselves have admitted that in order to attract airline traffic (and presumably freight traffic) then having controlled airspace is a pre-requisite. If this really is the case then it highly unlikely that we will see much meaningful commercial traffic this side of 2030. 2Excel will go back soon as they can, this will provide some aviation revenue, but the costs of hosting that whilst building up to a full reopening are likely to far exceed the 20% limit on cost increases that Grant Thornton have advised to implement.

 

Well according to Ros Jones propaganda out of 8600 responses to the questionnaire only 7% were against the reopening of the airport.

For a start this was a basic Microsoft forms questionnaire, but secondly it was incredibly suggestive. I wonder what the motivations behind releasing it were, I suspect we know the answer to that.

Also they have asked councillors to hire in favour of something most of them haven’t been able to view the detail of. In essence they were told by their respective leaders to back it no matter what, a kind of ‘trust me bro’ situation. This is wrong, but it’s politics and we chat kid ourselves that this doesn’t go on in far less high profile cases. Where the contention is is that a Regirge councillor who was on the scrutiny committee actually resigned from Reform to be an independent because he felt so strongly against the airport after having seen the business case and seeing that it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. For all we know it could just have lots of pretty pictures and talk of it being a global hub, we just don’t know. Whatever it is there’s clearly a reason that goes beyond commercial sensitivity because sensitive information can easily be redacted. What are they trying to hide?

The spin machine will be going into overdrive these next few weeks, I’ll expect to see more jobs advertised as they look to acquire licences etc. Will they make good on their word and complete another ‘soft market test’ soon as they have everything in place? Would be interesting to see whether there would be any takers this time around, I suspect if there are it would be at a significant financial loss to the council!

The Ros Jones that won't entertain a single question that doesn't suit the narrative, Oliver and Ros should really be accountable on this far more than they are but how can they be when the majority of folk have not the foggiest what is being proposed and don't know what the outcome is certain to be.

I thought yesterdays news was all a little subdude I expected far more fan fare I honestly think they are clutching at so few straws for good news they don't think its worth the effort at present they could easily instill more confidence in the whole thing from the wider community with the right people saying the right things at the right time without throwing too much detail at it, I suppose the budget for said sort of person may be getting eat up elsewhere.

It was interesting to note Dan Fell talking what can only be described as a complete and utter nonsense in his comments yesterday about maintaining transparency I mean the cheek of it, had he been on the Sherry or something a lot stronger even.

One of the most worrying developments however handy for CDC and the properganda machine is that things that could put a spanner in the works appear to be mounting up making the blame game for them easier to play, Airspace, potential legal challengers and delays leading to needing even more money, they will try and worm out of this to the full if possible if the thing does not open and I get more and more convinced that it won't.

I have said from the start airports that shut don't reopen no matter how hard they are trying. I said along time ago to the supporters mark 1 of DSA it would close as a plain and simple local aviation enthusiast to howls of derision, the airports in the wrong place built at the wrong time with an ever shrinking supply of Airlines in a Country set to be on its knees taxed to the hilt. The thing is this isn't just a DSA problem you could be debating three or four other airports status here if in the modern world those airports are really to the benefit of the area they serve. Aviation continues to go in one direction like most others things the big get bigger.

 

I haven’t seen the leaked texts myself but I understand there are WhatsApp screenshots doing the rounds within which the councillors tasked with voting on the loan on Thursday were threatened that a vote against would result in suspension, think this is referring to Regurge councillors and the now former leader Guy Aston.

I’m not naive to this occurring in politics frequently, but it just shows the scale of what’s happening here. Councillors who presumably have reasonable reason to be skeptical have been bullied into voting in favour despite not having been able to see the detail of what they’re supporting through fear of being removed from their party. Then the guy who was guilty of this decides to step down after the vote has passed.

 

Another YP article today re DSA….This time about business rates. As announced is this week budget the business rates on airports will effectively double! Yet another cost overrun on an already marginal at best business case….

 

at the meeting on the 23rd, there was a big mandate to get privatisation written into the report. It got done as they requested. and nobody was told what to do about their vote.

Another YP article today re DSA….This time about business rates. As announced is this week budget the business rates on airports will effectively double! Yet another cost overrun on an already marginal at best business case….

very poor reporting, not going to affect the cost of the airport in anyway