Exeter International Airport (EXT) - General Thread

[TheLocalYokel]

EXT scored well in the recent report on airport special assistance services. See below airport press release.

https://www.exeter-airport.co.uk/leading-the-way-in-airport-accessibility/


13 JULY 2018
Leading the way in airport accessibility


Exeter Airport classified as 'very good'

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has published its annual report on the accessibility ‘Special Assistance’ services provided by the top 30 UK airports, with Exeter Airport leading the way.

The report reveals that 16 UK airports have been rated ‘very good’, up from six airports in last year’s review, one of which is Exeter Airport.

Matt Roach, Exeter Airport Managing Director said: “We’re proud to be leading the way as one of the UK’s most accessible airports. We take this responsibility very seriously and the team at Exeter Airport works hard to ensure a smooth journey for all passengers, including delivering the highest level of service for disabled passengers.”

The report highlights that there are more than three million requests for assistance at UK airports annually – a rise of almost 80 per cent since 2010.

Satisfaction levels remain high, with 83 per cent of people requesting assistance stating that they are ‘satisfied’, with 54 per cent of those being ‘very satisfied’.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

EXT scored well in the recent report on airport special assistance services. See below airport press release.

https://www.exeter-airport.co.uk/leading-the-way-in-airport-accessibility/

13 JULY 2018
Leading the way in airport accessibility

Exeter Airport classified as 'very good'

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has published its annual report on the accessibility ‘Special Assistance’ services provided by the top 30 UK airports, with Exeter Airport leading the way.

The report reveals that 16 UK airports have been rated ‘very good’, up from six airports in last year’s review, one of which is Exeter Airport.

Matt Roach, Exeter Airport Managing Director said: “We’re proud to be leading the way as one of the UK’s most accessible airports. We take this responsibility very seriously and the team at Exeter Airport works hard to ensure a smooth journey for all passengers, including delivering the highest level of service for disabled passengers.”

The report highlights that there are more than three million requests for assistance at UK airports annually – a rise of almost 80 per cent since 2010.

Satisfaction levels remain high, with 83 per cent of people requesting assistance stating that they are ‘satisfied’, with 54 per cent of those being ‘very satisfied’.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Passenger leakage

This piece appeared in the local Exeter rag last month comparing fares at EXT and BRS.

https://www.devonlive.com/news/business/always-cost-more-fly-exeter-1820780

This set me to thinking that Devon and Cornwall combined loses almost as many passengers to BRS each year (about 1.5 million) as South Wales does. Yet I'm never conscious of the same determination to recover as many of these passengers as possible in Devon (and Cornwall) compared with South Wales. With Wales, whether the government, CWL management, local papers or 'Welsh' aviation followers generally, the issue seems to be a continual burning topic. I can understand why but at the same time I find the almost acceptance of the situation within the South West Peninsula and neighbouring areas puzzling.

EXT and NQY combined have an annual passenger throughput within sight of 1.5 million. With a similar number of passengers from their areas using BRS - the same applies with CWL and BRS - it might be thought they would be planning strategies aimed at clawing back some of those passengers.

 

[Jerry]

Passenger leakage

This piece appeared in the local Exeter rag last month comparing fares at EXT and BRS.

https://www.devonlive.com/news/business/always-cost-more-fly-exeter-1820780

This set me to thinking that Devon and Cornwall combined loses almost as many passengers to BRS each year (about 1.5 million) as South Wales does. Yet I'm never conscious of the same determination to recover as many of these passengers as possible in Devon (and Cornwall) compared with South Wales. With Wales, whether the government, CWL management, local papers or 'Welsh' aviation followers generally, the issue seems to be a continual burning topic. I can understand why but at the same time I find the almost acceptance of the situation within the South West Peninsula and neighbouring areas puzzling.

EXT and NQY combined have an annual passenger throughput within sight of 1.5 million. With a similar number of passengers from their areas using BRS - the same applies with CWL and BRS - it might be thought they would be planning strategies aimed at clawing back some of those passengers.

I think with Welsh passengers/enthuiasts it's possible it's nationalistic. I asked someone on twitter today why he thought Cardiff should have a NYC flight and he said ''that we should be able to fly from the capital our country to the US'' and i think it's similar with a lot of the European flights as well.
So i wonder if with Devon and Cornwall people aren't nationalistic/regionalistic in that way (an expample of that is Leeds and Manchester) so just see it as going to another airport in their country or their area. For me when i cross the Severn in my mind and in many Welsh peoples mind it's like crossing a border while maybe people from Devon and Cornwall don't have that sort of phsycological barrier when it comes to Bristol?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I suppose there is also the fact that the South West airports (ie EXT and NQY) have no access to government funding and support, unlike CWL. This means that these airport owners are less able to mount initiatives without risking their own money on a venture that might in the end not succeed.

I believe there might be more of a nationalistic element in Cornwall (Kernow) where some believe the county should be given at least a degree of autonomy from England. How many people there are in Cornwall who hold this belief I don't know.

I think we have one or two members who live in the South West who post to F4A. It would be good to know their views.

 

[737 400]

Living in Exeter, I think it would be fair to say that many people confuse charter flights with scheduled flights and hence the assumption that EXT is expensive to fly from.
With the exception of the occasional last-minute booking, we've always found charter flights/package holidays from EXT to be cheaper than any similar offering from BRS to the same resort/hotel - sometimes saving in the region of £400 to £600, plus the additional cost of driving to/from BRS and any shambles on the M5!
However scheduled flights from EXT are very expensive compared to BRS. As I've mentioned before elsewhere on this forum, what EXT badly needs is other carriers to compete against Flybe for custom on scheduled flights.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Living in Exeter, I think it would be fair to say that many people confuse charter flights with scheduled flights and hence the assumption that EXT is expensive to fly from.
With the exception of the occasional last-minute booking, we've always found charter flights/package holidays from EXT to be cheaper than any similar offering from BRS to the same resort/hotel - sometimes saving in the region of £400 to £600, plus the additional cost of driving to/from BRS and any shambles on the M5!
However scheduled flights from EXT are very expensive compared to BRS. As I've mentioned before elsewhere on this forum, what EXT badly needs is other carriers to compete against Flybe for custom on scheduled flights.

Most of the likely candidates for scheduled competition with Flybe are now operating at least 180-seat aircraft. Whilst there might well be a market for some of the sun routes, is the catchment big enough to make city-type routes viable on this size of aircraft?

The 1.5 million people from Devon and Cornwall who use BRS each year are spread across many routes at that airport. Is the Devon/Cornwall critical mass big enough to support a challenge to Flybe, whether on its existing routes or on routes not flown by Flybe, other than perhaps some scheduled sun routes?

My brother-in-law lives on Dartmoor and when we visit he often bangs on to me about having to use BRS or London airports for his holidays - he and his wife are flying to Olbia in October from BRS - when he prefers to use EXT. He flies from EXT when there is a route but often there isn't one to where he wants to go, whether charter or scheduled. He is not interested in aviation per se but can't understand why there aren't more flights and destinations from EXT.

 

[Jerry]

I think you also have to question the airlines as well. If look at Easyjet they have refused to expand outside of BRS in the area and operate out of airports like EXT and Ryanair operate a poor amount of flights outside of BRS which doesn't include EXT. There is only so much airports can do especially if the airlines themselves have no interest in operating out of airports like EXT.

 

[Silvercity]

Passenger leakage

This piece appeared in the local Exeter rag last month comparing fares at EXT and BRS.

https://www.devonlive.com/news/business/always-cost-more-fly-exeter-1820780

This set me to thinking that Devon and Cornwall combined loses almost as many passengers to BRS each year (about 1.5 million) as South Wales does. Yet I'm never conscious of the same determination to recover as many of these passengers as possible in Devon (and Cornwall) compared with South Wales. With Wales, whether the government, CWL management, local papers or 'Welsh' aviation followers generally, the issue seems to be a continual burning topic. I can understand why but at the same time I find the almost acceptance of the situation within the South West Peninsula and neighbouring areas puzzling.

EXT and NQY combined have an annual passenger throughput within sight of 1.5 million. With a similar number of passengers from their areas using BRS - the same applies with CWL and BRS - it might be thought they would be planning strategies aimed at clawing back some of those passengers.

I think years ago it was a bit like that in the Merseyside area ....ie you had to go to Manchester for your summer holiday flight. Locals just accepted it but I'm sure the airport management didn't. Now it's very different Liverpool Airport is looked at by local folk as their main departure airport of choice, of course there is still passenger leakage but much less.

 

[Silvercity]

I think with Welsh passengers/enthuiasts it's possible it's nationalistic. I asked someone on twitter today why he thought Cardiff should have a NYC flight and he said ''that we should be able to fly from the capital our country to the US'' and i think it's similar with a lot of the European flights as well.
So i wonder if with Devon and Cornwall people aren't nationalistic/regionalistic in that way (an expample of that is Leeds and Manchester) so just see it as going to another airport in their country or their area. For me when i cross the Severn in my mind and in many Welsh peoples mind it's like crossing a border while maybe people from Devon and Cornwall don't have that sort of phsycological barrier when it comes to Bristol?

I don't know whilst people from Leeds area do travel to Manchester given the chance they would rather fly local and support their local airport and area.

 

[Jerry]

I don't know whilst people from Leeds area do travel to Manchester given the chance they would rather fly local and support their local airport and area.

My sister flies quite a bit and it's all about choice. If the choice was there she'd fly from Leeds practically everytime. I think that is the snag for many smaller airport's there isn't the choice and there isn't the airlines willing to offer the choice because they want to protect there interests elsewhere.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I think you also have to question the airlines as well. If look at Easyjet they have refused to expand outside of BRS in the area and operate out of airports like EXT and Ryanair operate a poor amount of flights outside of BRS which doesn't include EXT. There is only so much airports can do especially if the airlines themselves have no interest in operating out of airports like EXT.

My sister flies quite a bit and it's all about choice. If the choice was there she'd fly from Leeds practically everytime. I think that is the snag for many smaller airport's there isn't the choice and there isn't the airlines willing to offer the choice because they want to protect there interests elsewhere.

I agree that airlines always want to try to protect their interests, as does any company in any field, but with airlines it's more a case of trying to prevent dilution in order to serve this end.

If Airline A operates a route at Airport Y it might not start the same route from nearby Airport Z because it judges that dilution of its Airport Y route would make that route less economic and that the Airport Z route would not compensate.

EXT and CWL suffer to a degree from their physical locations. Midway between the two is an airport serving a larger core catchment than that of the other two and a very wealthy one into the bargain (it also has substantial pockets of intense deprivation). Furthermore that airport (BRS) can and does with relative ease draw in travellers from both the EXT and CWL catchments. EXT on the other hand would struggle to attract many passengers from the CWL catchment as would CWL from the EXT catchment, because of distance in both cases.

So if, say, easyJet is looking to serve the south west corner of the UK it will look at BRS with its larger core catchment and accessibility to two neighbouring ones, plus some traffic from such areas as the M4 corridor to the east. Its larger core catchment means that any route from BRS would need less topping up in terms of passenger numbers from outside than would be the case at EXT or CWL; and EXT and CWL have less chance of pulling in passengers from the entire south west UK area for the reasons I outlined in the previous paragraph.

There will be some destinations that are busy enough to sustain flights with the same airline from other south west UK airports as well as from BRS, as Ryanair has shown with Faro and Tenerife from CWL and NQY, and with the charter market TUI operates from EXT and CWL as well as BRS. If a route has a USP it might operate from another south west UK airport but not from BRS such as Hahn-Newquay that feeds on the Germans' love of Cornwall.

There are probably other sun routes that Ryanair could operate from south west UK outside BRS. Because it has so many overseas bases Ryanair is much better placed than easyJet in operating to UK airports that are not airline bases. easyJet would have to operate mainly w-patterns which aren't always operationally realistic.

As this is an EXT thread, I am surprised that Ryanair has not begun one or two sun flights from there as it does from NQY and CWL. In the past Flybe has been quite forceful with EXT. For example it was publicly opposed to Bristol Airport becoming the preferred bidder for EXT when the airport was being sold into the private sector, and on another occasion threatened EXT with a reduction in its network there if a planned airport fire service strike was not sorted out.

If Ryanair or easyJet wanted to fly from EXT there is little the airport management could do provided there was physical room. However, either of them would expect juicy deals (from their perspective) and it might be that the EXT ownership would be wary of getting into bed with one of the major locos for probably no more than a skeleton route network if it was likely to impact negatively on their relationship with Flybe.

Interestingly, Flybe doesn't fly from BRS at all, except as a carrier for tour companies, but concentrates on EXT, CWL and NQY which probably reflects the size of aircraft it uses vis-a-vis those airports. So in that sense at the moment the main four south west UK airports could all be said to be suited (I've left out BOH because although it's in the Government's South West England Region it's more of a south coast airport).

 

[Jerry]

If Ryanair or easyJet wanted to fly from EXT there is little the airport management could do provided there was physical room. However, either of them would expect juicy deals (from their perspective) and it might be that the EXT ownership would be wary of getting into bed with one of the major locos for probably no more than a skeleton route network if it was likely to impact negatively on their relationship with Flybe.

I think it depends on what each airlines strategy is for the area. Like you Easyjet doesn't have the bases around Europe so looks like it's settled on a strategy of one giant base though it probably does have the right size aircraft in the A319s but obviously doesn't seem to like small bases ie 1or 2 aircraft or seasonal ones as well.
Ryanair seems a bit more confusing it's base at Bristol isn't overly large 4 to 5 aircraft? And it does have flights to NQY and CWL yet it isn't that big of a programme and like you said doesn't include Exeter at all just seems to me to be confusing as to what they want to achieve. I've no doubt if Ryanair operated routes into EXT they'd be a success it just seems to me they don't want to. Hopefully that will change sooner rather than later.

 

[Flybeboy]

I see their buiding a new boarding gate with covered walkway from terminal.i can see them needing a prop ext soon. Maybe converting that blue hangar and makeing more standa the other side,

 

[Jerry]

i can see them needing a prop ext soon.

What is that?

Does Exeter need more stands though?

 

[superking]

What is that?

Does Exeter need more stands though?

Flybe DASH 8 exit jerry.

 

[Flybeboy]

New air park for exeter airport, ita going to be next to the long stay car park and flybe hangar, the road all the way down to the hilton will be widened and a new roundabout by the terminal car park one. It says this will allow the airport to expaned outside and airside, its funney have they been told by flybe the hq, main, training is staying. Why spend millons by east devon council plus others on this if their going,. Maybe flybe want more room for something else or expand. Poss a new hangar with the car park moveing over to the airpark site. Whats the point of a new air park with flybe gone.it does say expand airside ops.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The Welsh Government’s (WG) Economy and Transport Minister opened the new e-gates at Cardiff Airport last week which the WG paid for at a cost of one million pounds. The minister echoed the views of CWL’s CEO who, when giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee on APD devolution recently, said that CWL is discriminated against because the playing field is not a level one.

The minister used the situation with e-gates as one example of CWL being disadvantaged. The UK government will only pay for e-gates at airports whose inbound passenger numbers are at least two million per year. This does seem an arbitrary figure and one can understand the disquiet of the minister and the CWL management.

Last week the CWL CEO gave other examples of what she considered to be disadvantageous to CWL, which in the main related to higher costs because of the lesser economy of scale.

CWL is not the only airport affected in this way of course. EXT is in a similar position as are airports such as Norwich, Humberside, Bournemouth, Newquay and others.

There a number of parallels between EXT and CWL.

EXT has a primary catchment size around a half to two-thirds of CWL’s and its annual passenger numbers reflect this when measured against CWL’s. It sits in a prosperous section of a generally poorer area of the UK, as does CWL. As with CWL, it sees a large number of its local people use BRS which is roughly midway between it and CWL.

EXT does have a regular London air connection (unlike CWL) but it doesn’t have the backing of a government (not just as airport owner) to pay for e-gates, offer indirect subsidies or be generally supportive.

Again like CWL it saw a huge drop in passenger numbers in the years during and following the major recession but has been recovering since.

EXT was actually sold into the private sector in 2007 (a majority share-holding at that time) as the recession was beginning to make itself felt. It was fully privatised a few years later.

CWL was allowed to deteriorate by its previous private sector owners during the recession and in 2013 was purchased by the Welsh Government with apparently no private sector interest, or at least none at a price that matched the airport’s valuation at the time.

Given that EXT is not a capital city airport and has a smaller core catchment than CWL but with some of the same difficulties that I’ve outlined, EXT has performed extremely impressively in recent years in terms of passenger number growth.

Again like CWL, it might benefit further if Ryanair decides to spread its own south-west Britain growth more widely amongst the airports in that part of the UK.

Apart from external matters such as Brexit, the only obvious potential fly in the ointment at the moment is the future course of Flybe, and yet again CWL is in a similar situation.

I really must try EXT one of these days. My broher-in-law and his wife live on Dartmoor and are regular leisure travellers. They often have to use BRS and sometimes LGW but have managed to use EXT once or twice recently. It's so convenient for them and its small size and lack of serious overcrowding has converted them into becoming real fans. Knowing of my interest in aviation, they sometimes ask why EXT doesn't have more services. They will be pleased with Ryanair and will hope it's only a start.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

https://www.exeter-airport.co.uk/executive-lounge/

I was browsing the EXT Airport website this evening and had a look at what the executive lounge was offering. This notice caught my eye.

To support the CAA campaign against unruly behaviour, our customers are requested to restrict their intake to two alcoholic drinks.

I wonder if this is becoming more common at airport lounges. Does anyone know of any other airports with lounges that restrict the number of drinks in this way?

At larger airports where airlines have their own lounges it's usually possible with major airlines to have a full meal and accompanying drinks before boarding if travelling first or business class, or if a certain grade frequent flyer membership and, increasingly with some airlines, simply by paying to enter.

I imagine that some passengers who have paid several thousand pounds for their ticket would not be amused to be restricted to two drinks with their meal.

With the EXT lounge though, it seems the food consists of snacks.

 

[Jerry]

To support the CAA campaign against unruly behaviour, our customers are requested to restrict their intake to two alcoholic drinks

Cardiff has the same limit i believe. I imagine as well that it also keeps down costs which is why some people believe it's done.