Argyll has three airports in the Highlands and Islands Airports Limited [HIAL] portfolio. The airports – at Campbeltown, Tiree and Islay – represent over one quarter of HIAL’s 11 airports and all three showed a growth in passenger numbers in the first six months of this year.
Over that period, Tiree has shown the highest increase of all 11 airports – of 12.6% over the same period last year.
Campbeltown is in fifth place with an increase of 6.9%; and Islay one place behind in 6th, with an increase of 3.9%.
The overall growth figure for HIALs portfolio is 5%, which is outperforming – by more than twice – the increase percentages of small European airports shifting fewer than 5 million passengers a year.
Needless to say, none of HIAL’s airports reach the level of ‘small’ in that sense. Its two busiest airports, Inverness and Sumburgh moved a total in the first six months of this year of, respectively 288,711 and 88,495. it seems impossible, but the City of Dundee, with 28,038 was in fifth place in this period, losing the highest percentage of its passengers, at -13.4%, compared with the same period last year. as well as Inverness and Sumburgh, it came behind Kirkwall and Stornoway.
In actual numbers carried, as separate from growth rates, Argyll’s HIAL airports are the goldfish amongst the carp.
Tiree may have grown the most, year on year in this period, but in that six months it carried the smallest number of passengers of the 11 HIAL airports – 4,531. Campbeltown carried 5,010 and Islay, what seems like a whopping 13,556.
Then there was the month of July – for which the figures from HIAL are also now available.
This month w2as bad news across all of the 11 airports except Tiree, again showing growth and the highest rate for the month at 3%, carrying 1.186. Inverness, at a modest 0.5% was the only other of the 11 to show any growth figure at all.
Islay had the worst loss for July, of -18.5%, carrying a total of 2.123 passengers. Dundee has the second highest loss for the month at -10% and Campbeltown the third highest at -7.9%, carrying 839.
What do these figures tell us?
For a start, they raise the question of whether locals are actually thinking of using their airports? We’ve just taken the HIAL website search to price a flight between Campbeltown and Glasgow a month ahead, Tuesday 23rd to Thursday 25th October. The outgoing flight costs £46, the incoming on £35 – a total of £81.
It HAD to be a weekday return because – guess what – there are no flights in or out of Campbeltown on Saturdays and Sundays. The reason will be demand – and of course it must be low. Just as with Glasgow’s Strathclyde Passenger Transport failing even to attempt to market the Seabus passenger ferry route between Helensbugh and Kilcreggan, nobody is marketing the absolutely spectacular scenic route from Glasgow to Campbeltown. This is there to be built.
You could go from Glasgow to London Luton by Easyjet, on the same dates as the Glasgow to Campbeltown flights above, for £57 – and this is not the cheapest, We took the mid-price fare on each day. Air fares are an issue.
Transatlantic passengers coming in to Glasgow should be able to buy in advance heavily discounted onward flights to the islands – and it takes as long to get to Campbeltown as to any island.
We don’t have any information why Tiree is showing this growth rate – unless Scottish Power Renewables are lobbying islanders at airspeed to drop resistance to their quite gross proposal for the Tiree Array – aka Argyll Array – offshore wnd farm that is 3.5 times the size of the island itself. We;ll see if we can find any indication as to why this growth is occurring – but it’s good news.
Oh – and the Isle of Barra is still feeling the impact of the TV series An Island Parish. It may have dropped -1.8% in passenger movements in July 2012 as against July 2011, but in the first six months of 2012, it grew on last year by 7.8%, carrying, 5,100.
Is it possible to get through an article without hugely biased remarks about the proposed wind farm off the coast of Tiree?
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If we do not constantly ask ourselves if a wind farm three times the size of the island is lies only just offshore is OK, we will simply abdicate individual responsibility on a matter with long lasting and complex consequences.
If we have the right debate we will arrive at the right conclusion – whatever that is.
But pretending that there are not serious issues here is wilfully blinkered and we’re not going away on this.
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But does it really belong in an article about the airport? And can you not address the issue with the facts and let people have the debate and arrive at the conclusion themselves rather than you telling people what to think? You’re not newsroom on this issue, you’re opinionroom.
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The dead hand of state support gives air travel, but not when it might be of most use for the local economy.
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As a regular user of the flight from Campbeltown to Glasgow and back I have a number of observations .
In my opinion the loss of British Airways replaced by Flybe has seen a deterioration in the service .
It is less reliable ,the lounge facilities at Glasgow are now basic and unwelcoming in comparison to the BA waiting area with no food and bar facilities available in the waiting area, and it is now more difficult and time consuming to book follow on flights from Glasgow with BA .
Also , the advantage of having the route advertised to the thousands of BA passengers worldwide in the BA in flight magazine has been lost .
We were told by the scottish government that the service would be better and cheaper with a weekend service promised , all now exposed as lies .
The downgrade in service is a perfect example of what happens when Scotland retreats into itself and would be repeated in every aspect of life were we to be separated from the rest of the UK
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Could not agree more on much of this. The Glasgow Airport facilities for the Campbeltown flight are quite dreadful. That dark little holding bay affair at the side of the main thoroughfare to the main gates could be made into something that countered the loss of the marketing opportunity you refer to in relation to BA.
It could be floor to ceiling panels of views from and at the end of the route – Arran and Goat Fell from above, the spine of the Kintyre Peninsula, Kilbrannan Sound, the plain through the isthmus out to Machrihanish before the Mull, Davarr, Westport Beach, Southend, the golf courses, the views from that great south east lump of the Mull, the Campbeltown waterfront… That would turn a dump into a set of magnets that would catch the eye pf passers by. At the moment, they just feel sorry for anyone sitting in that dim little coincidence.
How did the rote operators come to change? moment on
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Some sort of weird franchise thing; quite why Loganair(who were and still are the actual operator) thought that swapping from being a member of OneWorld with BA and all the other IAG group airlines to affiliating with FlyBe would be a step forward is difficult to imagine. Nothing wrong with FlyBe particularly, but they are definitely a low cost carrier and a small one at that.
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Loganair as franchisee of the routes had no say when BA wished to withdraw from the routes. Fortunately FlyBE stepped in and took over the routes with Loganair still as the franchisee.
Incidentally passenger numbers at Dundee Airport rose last month (Aug 2012) 1.8% over the same month in 2011.
The positive comparison is helped by the removal of passenger data for services to London City which were axed from the timetables by operator CityJet last summer.
That reduction left Dundee’s recent results fighting against a higher capacity during the previous 12 months. Managers are now able to compare like with like directly for the first time in a year. (Source Dundee Courier 18th September 2012 Business Section page 31).
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