Stansted Airport Blog

Stansted should get sold sooner, says Ryanair

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:24:17 BST

The recession has well and truly taken its toll on the airline sector, as revealed by new reports on passenger numbers by BAA. The results make for bleak reading for the industry, as the largest airport owner in the UK stated that the passenger numbers passing through all of its airports in May this year were 900,000 down on May 2008.

Overall, the drop across all of its airports was a significant 7.4%. However, the airport to fare the worst was Stansted, with passenger numbers down by a massive 18.5%. On top of that, for the first five months of the year the figure dropped by 15% compared to last year.

This has led Ryanair, one of the largest of the budget airlines, to call for the fast-tracked sale of the airport to sort the situation out sooner.

BAA has been forced by the Competition Commission to sell a number of its airports, including Gatwick and Stansted, in order to break up its monopoly in the UK. However, now Ryanair wants the sale of Stansted to be carried out as soon as possible as a result of its frustration over the dwindling passenger numbers.

A spokesman for Ryanair, Stephen McNamara, said that the quick sale of the airport would “tackle plummeting traffic”. But he also called on the government to “protect UK tourism and UK jobs”.

This was a reference to the government’s decision to add a £10 Airport Passenger Duty, also known as the tourist tax, which will come into force in November this year. Ryanair is worried this could exacerbate the problem, and is asking the government to scrap the tax for the sake of the industry.

First annual loss reported by Ryanair

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:43:41 BST

There’s bad news to come out of Ryanair as the no-frills airline just posted its first ever annual loss. The overriding factors behind the loss were the higher fuel costs that the company had to put up with during 2008 along with the lowering of the value of its stake in Aer Lingus.

The net loss made in the year up to 31 March was €169 million, which compares to a profit of €481 million the previous year. This loss was greater than many analysts had been expecting. However, despite this figure, the annual sales rose by 8.4% this year.

The fuel costs were the deciding factor, with Ryanair stating that this rose from €791.3 million to €1.26 billion this year. There were huge fluctuations in the price of oil throughout 2008: in July 2008 fuel costs rose to $147 a barrel, but later in the year they dropped down again as the recession took its hold.

Ryanair currently has a 29.8% stake in Aer Lingus, whom it has approached to take over a couple of times now, but it was also forced to write this down by €222 million after the share price of the company fell.

However, if the Aer Lingus factor and the fuel price were taken out of the equation, Ryanair would have made a profit of €105 million, which would still have been a fall on the year before but a profit nonetheless.

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, said that the airline wants to “drive fares materially lower” despite the recession. He also stated that the company is growing strongly, stating that this year it will “carry twice the total number of passengers as British Airways”.

Facial recognition comes to Stansted

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:02:49 BST

If you have travelled through Stansted Airport recently, you may have been tempted to try out the new facial recognition machines that have been installed in a landmark trial. The new technology has arrived at the airport in a bid to improve waiting times for passengers and to add an extra level of security at passport control.

The new machines work by scanning the face of the traveller and then comparing it to the digital photo that is stored on their biometric passport. After making the scan, the machines measures a series of points on the traveller's face to compare it to the passport photo to see how well they match. It can then instantly tell if they are the same person and allow them through the gate. The system is also intelligent enough to recognise when people have changed their appearance since their passport photo was last taken.

It is currently only available to UK or European citizens, and only to those who carry a biometric passport. However, no registration process is involved.

The trial is a joint partnership between BAA and the UK Border Agency. The assistant director of the UK Border Agency, Barry McGill, said that the gates should be used to “reduce the time you spend at passport control”.

Although Stansted is the first place in the country to get the machines, the technology will also be available in 10 other airports by August of this year, and it could soon become the standard method used at passport controls across the world. However, airports are still likely to rely to an extent on traditional technology in the form of manual checks which will be carried out at random.

Ryanair passengers to carry own baggage?

Fri, 15 May 2009 15:52:56 BST

We have all become familiar with having to pay for extras on budget airlines; it started with being charged for food and drinks and has gradually extended to having to pay to check in luggage or for “speedy boarding”. Ryanair, however, has taken the art of charging for “extras” to another level!

Recently there has been talk of a “fat tax” for male passengers weighing over 130kg and females over 100kg, a charge for using the toilet on board and the latest suggestion is axing baggage handlers and making passengers carry their own luggage through security to the foot of the steps at the plane and picking it up at the other end.

The airline, however, has said that it will not go ahead with the plans if it means their quick turnaround is affected. It was this concern that put the fat tax on hold since it was felt that it would delay both check-in and turnaround times.

As from this October, passengers will have to check-in online (something which three quarters of all their passengers do already) as there will be no Ryanair check-in desks at airports. The airline expects to save over £44 million a year by introducing this measure.

Ryanair was the first of the budget airlines to charge passengers for hold luggage and this has resulted in about 75% of their passengers restricting themselves to bags which can be taken on board. Last summer the airline announced proposals to ban hold luggage altogether on several of its non-tourist routes popular with business travellers.

Stansted battle lost by campaigners

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:56:38 GMT

SSE (Stop Stansted Expansion) campaigners are disappointed to have lost their High Court battle to halt the plans for the expansion of Stansted airport. BAA, the authority which runs Stansted, wants passenger numbers to rise from 25 million a year to 35 million and flights from the airport to increase from 241,000 to 264,000 a year.

Their legal argument was based on the premise that the government had failed to take proper account of “adverse effects” when it gave the go-ahead for the expansion. SSE spokesman, Paul Stinchcombe, told High Court judge, Sir Thayne Forbes, that the government had not taken into consideration the effect on UK trade, the noise levels and the environmental effects, despite the fact that it had previously agreed that it should take these factors into consideration.

The judge dismissed the argument, refused the right to appeal and ordered the group to pay £20,000 costs.

Nick Barton, commercial and development director of Stansted airport, said that the news was great for the millions of people who want to fly from the Essex airport, whether on business or for pleasure, the thousands of people who work there, and the businesses across the region which depend on the airport.

The Department of Transport has also welcomed the decision, saying that runway space is so scarce in the south east that it makes sense to make optimum use of what is already available.

BAA would like to open a second runway and a public enquiry is due to start next month.

BAA agree to Stansted sell-off

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:28:30 GMT

When the Competition Commission releases its final report in March on the subject of BAA’s monopoly of UK airports, it will very likely call for the company to be broken up. BAA has already accepted that it will probably have to sell up to three of its seven airports, and as a result Gatwick has already been put up for sale with the aim of having the sale complete by May of this year.

However, the company has so far resisted calls to sell off Stansted Airport, which sees 23 million passengers passing through each year and is the most important airport in Europe for budget flights. The company has previously said that it would go to court over the demands that it sell Stansted and either Edinburgh or Glasgow, claiming that the plans of the Competition Commission were unfair.

However, following the decision to allow Heathrow to get its controversial third runway, it seems that BAA is in no mood to push its luck. Realising that Heathrow is by far its most important airport, and that it will soon be handling even more flights, it has begun to see the sale of Stansted as a way to raise some much needed capital.

But although it has all but accepted that it will not be able to hold onto the airport, the company will probably fight over the decision of when it will have to sell up. BAA has applied to build a second runway at the airport, so this may well see the Competition Commission relaxing its stance on when it has to be sold.