The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Wizz Air makes magic with passenger figures
Bosses hope new flights will boost terminal footfall
Bosses at Aberdeen International Airport ( AIA) hope new flights taking off for Poland next week will help passenger figures pick up again following a decline in May.
A total of 300,871 people used the terminal last month, which wasdownby 8.1% from May 2014.
AIA said helicopters saw the biggest decrease amid the oil and gas industry downturn. Copter passenger numbers were down by 13.1% on 2014 levels, while fixed-wing traffic suffered a 7.2% decline.
Managing director Carol Benzie said: “We have seen a reduction in traffic across all three sectors, helicopters, international and domestic, last month due to the impact of the cost efficiencies currently being driven throughout the oil and gas sector.”
The airport is gearing up for the first flight taking off to Gdansk in Poland next Friday.
Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air is behind the new twice-weekly service, which has one-way prices starting from less than £20.
Poland is a new destination for AIA, which will become Wizz Air’s latest airport in a fast- growing network of more than 380 routes spanning 38 countries.
According to AIA, visitors to Gdansk, which is on the Baltic coast, can expect an “energetic city crammed with diverse sights, historic thoroughfares, a wealth of culture and some of the oldest churches in Europe”.
The Polish city is expected to become a popular connection option for passengers travelling from Aberdeen to other parts of eastern Europe. A spokesman for Wizz, which carried more than 16.5million passengers on 100,000plus flights during the year to March 31, said bookings for the new AberdeenGdansk route were “in line with expectations”. Meanwhile, the two London airports vying to be chosen as the site for a new runway both announced
record passenger figures yesterday.
Heathrow had its bestever May, with 6.34million people passing through it – a 1.7% rise on the same month last year.
Gatwick was used by 3.6million travellers last month, which was up by 5.8% on its May 2014 figure.
The Whitehall- appointed Airports Commission is due in the next few day s t o recommend whether Heathrow or Gatwick should get a new runway, although there is concern that a fullUKGovernment response to the commission may not come until Christmas. The owner of Argos said it expects trading to remain “challenging” as the chain suffered a drop in sales after seeing demand fall for televisions and tablet computers.
Argos, which runs 788 stores, saw like-for-like sales fall 3.9% in the 13 weeks toMay 30as a rise in sales of mobile phones failed to offset the decline in electrical goods.
But parent Home Retail Group said samestore sales at its DIY chain Homebase lifted 5.4% in the quarter, driven by sales of bigticket and seasonal items.
The DIY chain closed 17 shops during the quarter after it said in October it would shut a quarter of its 323 home improvement stores, or about 80 outlets, by early 2018 as consumers fall out of love with working on their homes.
“Like-for-like sales fell 3.9% in the 13 weeks to May 30”
It currently runs 279 Homebase outlets.
By contrast, the group opened a net 33 Argos stores in the three months to the end of May, with the retailer two years into a five-year revamp which is introducing newly-designed shops and iPads for ordering products instead of catalogues.
It opened 32 Argos concessions within Homebase, and two within Sainsbury’s during the quarter as the supermarket forges partnerships with other retailers to fill underused shop floor space.
Home Retail Group chief executive John Walden said: “The performance at Argos in the quarter was broadly in line with both our expectations and previous guidance, with sales being adversely impacted by market declines in key electrical and seasonal product categories.”