The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Tender puts £175 cap on Dundee to London flight
A IRLINES BIDDING to run flights between Dundee and London have been told to cap maximum ticket prices at £175 each way, it has emerged.
Tender documents seen by The Courier reveal council officials want a new operator to ensure seats are not prohibitively expensive for business and leisure travellers when it takes over the route later this year.
They hope a new, subsidy-supported schedule — including the maximum fare — will attract more fliers to the city’s struggling airport.
No minimum price has been applied, but operators will be obliged to cover their costs.
The news comes as the Department for Transport yesterday confirmed it stood ready to help fund any commercial shortfall under a Public Service Obligation. The Whitehall department said cash could be provided under a £20 million UK Government scheme launched to secure the future of regional air links.
A Europe-wide tender, required under state aid rules, is currently being advertised, with city council officials understood to be inviting a number of candidates to submit bids.
But applicants are invited to consider using any airport within 60 minutes’ rail travel of central London — an envelope which includes Southend, Stansted and Luton airports as well as Gatwick, Heathrow and London City.
The retention of an air link to London is regarded as an absolute priority given Dundee’s ongoing £1 billion regeneration programme, and hopes that hundreds of thousands of visitors could be attracted to the city following the completion of the £45m V&A at Dundee museum.
A Scottish Government-commissioned scoping report published in the run-up to Christmas said keeping a London service on the schedule was vital to the future of the Riverside base.
It warned the facility could be mothballed unless the London link was retained, and called for greater efforts to be made on route development and marketing.
That aim was frustrated when present operator CityJet announced it would withdraw its services from Dundee to London City from March just days later.
The city council and Transport Scotland have since introduced a stop-gap service to London Stansted, which will run from March 30 until a new operator can be appointed.
It is understood that the cost, which could run to £400,000, will be split between the two parties.
It is hoped that a new operator can be named in time for services to start in July, reducing that total significantly.
The tender specifies two return flights Monday to Friday, with the first arrival into London no later than 8.30am and last departure for Dundee no earlier than 6pm.
The first northbound service is expected to arrive in Dundee before 11am. There will also be a minimum of one return flight each Sunday, with departure from London no earlier than 6pm.
A ircraft are expected to have a minimum capacity of 30 seats.
Dundee and A ngus Chamber of Commerce chief executive Sandra Burke welcomed the proposed price cap, saying it would allow firms to plan their expenditure.
But she added that businesses had responded particularly positively to the interim service’s lowest-cost £75 fare, and would be looking for the “keenest” prices possible from a new operator.
A council spokesman said the tender would be notified to “a wide range of potentially interested parties”, but declined to comment further, citing commercial confidentiality.
Tender documents revealed that Dundee City Council “intends to seek funding from the Department for Transport for any subsidy to be paid to the successful tenderer”.
A spokesman for the DfT said it would examine any proposal submitted by the local authority.
“A ny funding will be provided from the £20m fund announced by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2013 to maintain regional air links to London,” he said.