Manston air show had its problems, but is this the way forward?

More people went to Manston than on any day for years. There were lots of businesses, big and small, from near and far, out there making money.   

With a bit of practice, they could probably manage to get the traffic management more or less right. Manston could become the new Kent County showground. They have the space to run massive open air shows. Perhaps if they started with boot fairs, and then gradually scaled up…

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Thousands of people were unable to get into Manston Airport and were
only able to view the aircraft from their cars as they waited in
traffic on surrounding roads.

Organisers of the South East Air Show in Kent
have been criticised after thousands of people trying to reach it were
stuck in long queues of traffic. It was the first time in 20 years that Manston Airport had
hosted the event but many motorists said they had to turn round and
return home on Saturday.

Nine-mile tailbacks on Thanet Way meant journeys took more than four hours. Organiser Chris Yates said the air show was more popular than expected and the road infrastructure could not cope: 

“An awful lot of people [were] trying to come down some very
small roads that come into Manston Airport – a classic dual carriageway
two-into-one scenario.”

John Turp, who took four hours to travel from the Monkton
roundabout to the airport – a distance of two miles – said it had to be
“one of the most shambolic events ever staged. The day was ruined for tens of thousands of people by the inept organisation.”

Others trying to get to the air show vented their anger on social media websites.

Paul Blair said he left Maidstone at 09:40 BST and did not arrive at the airport until 16:20:

“The stewards organising the event parking didn’t have a clue
and were turning people around and sending them back the other way. A complete waste of time and money and I had one very disappointed and upset little boy who missed it all.”

The event featured a display of aircraft, old and new, from the last Vulcan bomber still flying to the Apache helicopter. Mr Yates said initial news that it would be one of the last
flights of the Vulcan had attracted a lot of people to the show, but
this was not now the case as it had since been announced that it would
be around for two more years.

He added that lessons would be learned from the issues and there would be “plenty to debrief on”.

“We’ll learn about the car parks and we’ll learn about the timings of peoples’ arrival and bigger car parks,” he said.

In a statement on Sunday, Heritage Events apologised to people who experienced long delays and were unable to attend the event.

“We would ask for people to email their views and their personal experiences to enquiry@heritage-events.co.uk so we can respond appropriately to each person individually.”

BBC 23rd Jun 2013

Infratil aims to offload loss-making UK airports

Infratil says it is still trying to sell two airports in Britain, despite passenger numbers improving. The company has been trying to sell Glasgow Prestwick and Kent
International airports, which last year lost $10 million, for more than a
year.

Latest figures show passenger numbers at Glasgow increased 14% in May
with more than 118,000 passengers passing through, and the budget
airline Ryanair plans to add more flights in July.

Infratil chief executive Tim Brown says the airports have attracted
lots of potential suitors but have not yet found a buyer. Talks with
several interested parties are ongoing.

Infratil shares rose 3.5 cents yesterday to close at $2.23.

Radio New Zealand 14th Jun 2013

Airbus A380 for training at Manston for three weeks

Manston Airport is due to welcome the world’s largest commercial passenger aircraft for a critical crew training programme.

British Airways’ first Airbus A380, a double-decked four Rolls Royce
engine jet, will arrive at the Thanet terminal for a period of training
in preparation for its launch into service later in the year.

Once the A380 training is complete, the airline’s new Boeing 787
Dreamliner will also make its way to Manston for part of its “entry into
service” programme. Charles Buchanan, chief executive of Manston Airport, said:

“We are
thrilled that the UK’s leading airline chose Manston as the place to
carry out its entry into service programme.
Essentially, this means that training for both the pilots and cabin
crew will be taking place over three weeks with the aircraft departing
from here once or twice a day and also staying overnight.”

Dave Thomas, British Airways’ head of flight technical and training,
added:

“With one of the longest runways in the UK, Manston offers ideal
facilities for our programme. We are looking forward to working with the staff who have been very helpful throughout the preparation period.”

British Airways has 12 A380s on order with flights due to start between London and Los Angeles in October. The manufacturer claims it has the lowest cost per seat and the lowest emissions per passenger of any large aircraft.
Despite having almost 50% more floor space and 60% more headroom than
the Boeing 747-400, it is claimed to be 50% quieter on take off.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines recently launched a twice-daily service from
Manston to Schiphol, linking Kent with 130 destinations worldwide. There will be no interruption to this service by the A380 training programme.

kentonline 12th Jun 2013

   

Heathrow closes – TWO planes diverted to Manston

Flights have been diverted via Manston Airport from Heathrow today after a plane was forced to make an emergency landing.

Both runways were closed when the British Airways plane caught fire in mid-air shortly after taking off this morning. Two diverted British Airways A320 aircraft – en route to Heathrow from Helsinki and Budapest – landed at Manston.

Both flights will return to Heathrow when permission is granted by London Air Traffic Control. Manston
Airport chief executive Charles Buchanan said:

“We were pleased to
help, and even more pleased that the incident ended safely for all
concerned. I’d
just like to thank all the team at Manston who handled these two
flights, as well as the passengers arriving and departing on the
scheduled KLM service to and from Schiphol, Amsterdam this morning.”

All passengers and crew from Heathrow flight were safely evacuated and the fire brigade said the blaze has been put out. Heathrow’s two runways were closed before one re-opened later in the morning. Other flights were diverted via Stansted and Cardiff. A statement from British Airways said:

“The BA762, Heathrow to Oslo
service, returned back to Heathrow shortly after take-off due to a
technical fault. The Airbus A319 aircraft was carrying 75 customers. The aircraft landed safely and emergency slides were deployed and we are currently caring for our customers. Emergency services attended the aircraft. We will be carrying out a full investigation into the incident.”

kentonline 24th May 2013

Airports write-down lead to Infratil profits plunge

The plunging value of for-sale
Prestwick airport contributed to a nose dive in its New Zealand owners’
profits, Infratil reported today.

The firm said the Ayrshire airport and its sister at Manston in Kent were now together worth £11.4 million compared to £38 million a year ago. They had been valued at £44m in 2011.

Infratil said the write-down had been the biggest element of its net profits falling from £28m to £1.8m in the year to March. The company admitted it was struggling to offload the airports. Its results statement said:

“The state of European markets has made the sale of the airports unpredictable and difficult. The two UK airports have not yet been sold and have been written down further. The
decrease in value of Infratil Airports Europe [Prestwick and Manston]
reflects a negative revaluation of airport assets during the year.”

Prestwick, which has been on sale since March last year, suffered the loss of Wizz Air’s two routes to Glasgow this year.

However,
Ryanair – the airport’s sole remaining passenger airline – has
increased its flights from there, and chief executive Michael O’Leary
has said the firm had an “unbreakable commitment” to Prestwick.

Scotsman.com 15th May 2013

Flight Blight

Nobody mentioned the low flying planes before this reader bought a house in Ramsgate. Clearly this was dishonest. It also highlights one of the negative effects that the airport has on the local area.

Do any of you have helpful suggestions for our reader?

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Dear No Night Flights,

I wonder if you might be able to help us.

We purchased a house in [central Ramsgate, under the flightpath] last year and were unaware when we moved in of low flying
planes over the house on a regular basis to and from Manston Airport.

We were not informed of this occurrence by either the estate agents or
the vendor before we bought the house and we would be very grateful to
hear if you have come across this problem before and if you can suggest
if there is anything we can do about it.

We realise that legal action
would be expensive but wondered if this might come under the consumer
act for example?

With thanks for your help and we look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely…

Manston’s rat-plane nose-dives in Dublin

Aptly named Bin Air joins the pantheon of unsavoury and unsafe airlines that are welcome at Manston airport. It would appear that Charles Buchanan, Infratil’s representative on Planet Thanet, is so desperate for business that he’ll do business with anyone. This does nothing for the confidence or peace of mind of those of us who live near the flight path.

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Dublin Airport reopens after plane’s wheel fails

The scene of a plane crash at Dublin Airport
after the front wheel of the Bin Air aircraft buckled on landing causing
the accident on the runway, Thursday March 7, 2013. Neither the pilot
nor co-pilot, the only crew, suffered injuries, an airport spokeswoman
said.

Flights at Dublin Airport were temporarily
suspended Thursday when a BinAir cargo plane’s nose wheel collapsed
after touching down, the second such landing-gear failure to beset the
small German charter airline.

The Dublin Airport Authority said nobody was hurt when the forward
landing gear of the Fairchild Metroliner twin-turboprop aircraft failed.

The aircraft, operated by the Munich-based freight carrier BinAir,
was carrying two pilots and a cargo of laboratory rats from [Manston] Kent,
southeast England. It thumped to a stop with its nose on the tarmac.

Five inbound flights to Dublin were diverted and dozens delayed as
authorities shut the obstructed runway. Unfavorable wind conditions
meant it took about a half-hour to open a backup runway. The authority said flight schedules at the airport — the busiest in
Ireland, averaging more than 400 flights daily — were back to normal by
noon.

Thursday’s landing-gear mishap was not the first for BinAir, which
uses a fleet of about a dozen Metroliner turboprop aircraft and
specializes in ad-hoc freight bookings.

In January 2010, a BinAir Metroliner skidded off the runway in
Stuttgart, Germany, when the right-side landing gear collapsed upon
landing. In that accident, the pilot reported a landing gear fault
warning and aborted the initial landing, but ground crew said they could
see the landing gear fully deployed. German air safety investigators
determined that the right-wing landing gear collapsed upon hitting the
tarmac.

European Union and German air safety authorities placed BinAir under
“intensified” scrutiny, and warned it could lose its license to operate
in Europe, but the airline undertook unspecified actions for “verified
safety deficiencies” according to an April 2011 report by the European
Commission’s Air Safety Committee.

When contacted by telephone, BinAir owner Eugen Pansow declined to
identify himself to The Associated Press and hung up. In a follow-up
call, Pansow said he couldn’t comment until he knew what caused the
accident. He declined to specify the aircraft’s age or date of
acquisition.

The Fairchild Metroliner itself has had a troubled history. About 700
of the aircraft were built in many variants, chiefly in Texas, from
1972 to 1989. They have suffered a dozen fatality-causing crashes over
the past quarter-century.

In February 2011, six people were killed at Cork Airport in southwest
Ireland when a Metroliner operated by an Isle of Man airline,
Manx2.com, clipped a wing on the tarmac and flipped onto its back while
trying to land in heavy fog. That was the first deadly crash of a
commercial airline flight at an Irish airport.

AP 7th Mar 2013

A hill of beans

Manston was to be barred from importing beans unless it was properly registered. Manston applied for registration and was refused. A few days later, it was accepted. What happened in those few days? Nobody wants to say.

Last year, Thanet was shocked to the core to learn that Manston might not be allowed to continue importing Kenyan beans at any hour of the day or night it damn well pleases. Nothing to do with limitations on their disgustingly anti-social night flights, of course – this was all due to the mighty European Commission trying to protect us from revolting poisons in our greens.

If you believed half the self-important hype that Manston spouts about its commercial significance, you might have expected the economy of east Kent to have completely collapsed by now. It hasn’t. It may be a bit wobbly, but that’s not down to beans – it’s broader than that. No, the major effect of this ban would have been that Manston would have lost some, or even all, of its business with its largest remaining customer, Cargolux.

Understandably keen to beat the 1st January 2013 deadline, Manston applied to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to be registered as a Designated Port of Entry (DPE), the status that would allow it to continue importing the mission-critical beans. On 20th December, the FSA refused their application, as Manston failed to meet the standards laid down in Article 4 of the regulations, which relates to the “Minimum requirements for designated points of entry“.

And then the odd stuff starts.

All the necessary bean-balancing and toxin-testing that is required by
the FSA isn’t done by FSA people, or even Manston staff, but by Council
employees – probably Environmental Health Officers (EHOs).

You’ll remember that Christmas fell rather awkwardly (or rather well, perhaps) last year, resulting in an unusually large amount of limbo time. Nonetheless, between 20th December and the end of the year, TDC managed to sprinkle enough fairy dust over this problem to make it go away.

Somehow, TDC managed to rearrange the workload for its already over-stretched EHOs, AND cut through swathes of Government and FSA red tape, and PHEW! at the eleventh hour saved Manston’s bacon. And beans.

You would have thought that this level and quality of support for local business is something that TDC would be shouting about – ideally, they would be offering the same shoulder-to-shoulder commitment to more local businesses.

But they seem to be surprisingly modest about how much time and effort it took to solve the problem of Manston being unfit to import beans. Or what the ongoing costs might be. Or what the impact on the other services provided by the EHOs might be. Or whether Thanet’s EHOs will in future be on 24 hour standy (and rates?) in readiness for a “delayed arrival” which, as we know, can arrive at any time day or night.

Why throw good money at bad airport?

In the hope of finding why KCC are peeing our money away, we’ve asked Sharon Dawson (top banana at Visit Kent) some simple and obvious questions. We’ll let you know what, if anything, comes of them.

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Dear Ms Dawson,

I understand that Visit Kent has been given £100,000 of public money in order to ‘market’ KLM flights at Manston.  My understanding is that you believe that this money is to enable you to bring visitors into the county as tourists to the county in order to spend money in the county.

I would be grateful if you could answer some questions.

1. What research have KCC or Visit Kent done in terms of revenue brought specifically into a county that has a regional airport? The research I have undertaken shows that regional airports are exporters of tourists to a very significant degree and that even those visitors they do attract  tend to head straight for major tourist centres, most notably London, Edinburgh, Glasgow etc. could you provide me with some concrete evidence that you have that shows significant revenue streams from incoming tourists at comparable regional airports?  I am assuming that such research must be available or such a significant sum of money would not have been committed to a privately owned operation?

2. Exactly how is this money to be spent and where? Given the aim is to attract foreign visitors – which countries/cities/areas are to be targeted and on what basis? I would like confirmation that no money is to be spent advertising outward bound routes given that simply takes money OUT the county. The UK’s tourism deficit is already greater than in any other country so it hardly benefits our ailing economy, both local and national to spend public money on persuading people to spend their money abroad.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Council throws good money at bad airport

KCC + KLM + KIA = WTF

Getting a straight answer out of KCC is hard at the best of times – even with the legal leverage of the Freedom of Information Act it can take months. But it’s usually worth the wait, and the dogged persistence is rewarded. And let’s not forget, anything that’s released under the FoI Act is stuff that they should have told you in the first place. By definition.

A man of Kent, showing the finest British bulldog determination and tenacity set about finding out if there are any hidden deals behind the recently announced KLM-Manston story. Eventually, he managed to prise these three sentences out of them:

I can confirm Kent County Council has not been asked for any contributions from KLM nor have we been asked to fund KLM.

We were however, asked by the owners of Manston airport if we would contribute to a marketing package to market both the route and the opportunities in Kent.

We have agreed a contribution of up to £100,000 subject to approval of a marketing plan and for the monies to be managed by Visit Kent.

Regular readers will remember that KCC and Infratil colluded in a bid to central Government which included a generous £600k sweetener for KLM – effectively “we’ll pay you to use this airport”. They were turned down, quite rightly.

We’ll probably never know whether KLM had put pressure on them to cross their palm with silver, or whether KCC and Infratil are simply very generous (with other people’s money), but it’s depressingly unsurprising to find that they’re at it again.

Everyone knows Infratil is selling Manston airport. More accurately, Infratil is trying to sell Manston airport – it’s been on the market since March 2012, and the asking price seems to be sinking to the same level as airport-free agricultural land. Despite this, they have the balls to ask KCC for money to market and promote the highest profile route they’ve got (even though it isn’t even running yet). KCC, unspeakable idiots that they are, agreed!

For reasons best known to KCC – but I suspect connected to EU competition regulations – they will be “laundering” the money through Visit Kent. So Kent County Council is happy to use public money to market a French/Dutch airline flying from a New Zealand-owned airport. And, yes, this is the same KCC that’s cutting funding to things that people care about.

What makes KCC think this will be money well spent? And what exactly are Visit Kent going to be doing? Good questions, which we have asked on your behalf.