Newquay and Plymouth Airports - their rise and fall

This was posted in the local morning news paper and explains in great detail the real reasons behind why Air Southwest aka Eastern Airlines are pulling the plug at Plymouth and Newquay airports

Air Southwest has been widely criticised for leaving Plymouth without an airlink. Yet the company^s former compliance and safety manager, Keith Boxall, believes the blame lies elsewhere.

It's about time that somebody told the truth about the demise of the airline that served Plymouth. For weeks now Air Southwest has been blamed for "pulling out" of Plymouth, when actually it was forced out and also forced into closure.

Airport Sutton Harbour Group lost staff after its announcement that the airport would close in December

Sutton Harbour Group lost staff after its announcement that the airport would close in December

The first problem was a "turf war" with Flybe on the Newquay to Gatwick route. This route was the most popular of Air Southwest's routes but Flybe persistently operated its aeroplanes over that route at very low fares. The effect of this was to force Air Southwest to offer similar fares or come off the route.

Air Southwest took Flybe to court in 2010 alleging unfair trading but lost and as there was no possibility of charging a realistic fare (which would still have been cheaper than the train), the route to Gatwick from Plymouth via Newquay by Air Southwest was closed.

Another nail in the coffin was hammered in by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA^» ) and UK^▸ National Air Traffic Services (NATS). In early 2009 the UK airspace rules were aligned with those in Europe. Plymouth (and Newquay) is outside of what is known as "controlled airspace". Both airports have Air Traffic Control (ATC^▸ ) but this is only for aircraft taking off and landing at the airports. There is no ATC for aircraft flying into and out of the South West, west of a line from Exeter to Bristol.

Until 2009, the UK had rules that provided a degree of ATC in areas outside of controlled airspace, but under the European rules this was no longer permitted and as such, discontinued.

The CAA was concerned about the safety of aircraft carrying passengers flying outside of controlled airspace, and demanded that all airlines flying in this airspace carried out a safety risk assessment concerning the probability of a mid-air collision.

Air Southwest carried out this risk assessment and determined that the risk was unacceptably high during times when Plymouth Military radar (run by the Royal Navy and which provided an ATC radar service to Plymouth airport) was closed. Newquay, on the other hand was less affected as it had its own radar which operated all the time the airport was open.

The owner of Plymouth Airport, Sutton Harbour Group, was asked by Air Southwest (which it also owned at that time) to put in a radar service at Plymouth. The most cost effective way of achieving this would have been to have paid the Royal Navy to provide radar information from the radar set at Wembury into the ATC tower at Plymouth. At the same time Air Southwest asked the CAA and NATS to establish controlled airspace in the form of an air corridor from Exeter to Plymouth and on to Newquay. This was refused.

Air Southwest then asked that special procedures should be applied to aircraft flying near Plymouth, but this was also refused. Air Southwest then asked for a note to be put on air navigation charts warning other pilots of the possibility of encountering their aircraft near Plymouth, but even this simple safety measure was also refused.

Having exhausted every avenue through the CAA and NATS, it was left to Sutton Harbour to make a decision and spend a relatively small amount of money on the radar link to Wembury. This too was finally refused last year, despite the sale of a large portion of the airport by Sutton Harbour, for housing development.

Throughout 2010 Air Southwest (and the airport) was starved of investment by the owners. The airline had plans for a sixth aeroplane, new routes (the London City route was one) and to bring the maintenance of the aeroplanes into Air Southwest (it had previously been contracted to British International at Plymouth). All these were abandoned by Sutton Harbour Group.

Eventually, Air Southwest was put up for sale and was finally "given away" to Eastern Airlines in December 2010. Eastern sold the three Dash-8 aeroplanes that Air Southwest owned outright, to an aeroplane leasing company and then leased them back. Two of these were subsequently returned to the lease company, leaving just three. One of these was also planned to be returned later in 2011. It seemed to me that Eastern had no intention of continuing the air service into Plymouth and Newquay, but instead effectively based the aeroplanes at Aberdeen to service their oil company contracts. Redundancies followed.

Coupled to this, Sutton Harbour Group had rather unwisely announced that the airport would close in December. All this did was to encourage the airport staff to look for other work. As most of them were highly qualified ATC, fire and security staff, they left in droves. This effectively has reduced the airport manning to a level that is unacceptable for passenger flights out of Plymouth.

Both Sutton Harbour Group and Eastern Airways have been aware that the RN radar unit shuts down for the whole of August. It has done so every year for donkey's years. But with the airspace rule change, the adverse safety risk assessment and the refusal of the authorities and Sutton Harbour Group to do anything about the situation, suspension of the flights in and out of Plymouth throughout August was inevitable.

This will now hasten the demise of the airport. Likewise, the loss of income (albeit much reduced by route closures and insufficient aeroplanes) to Air Southwest, has given Eastern the excuse to pull out of the South West altogether.