Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘Air travel WILL recover – but it won’t be a quick fix’
THE boss of Bristol Airport is confident the aviation sector will eventually recover after the pandemic but believes vaccine passports will be “important” for anyone wanting to travel abroad.
Chief executive David Lees says the opening up of countries to holidaymakers and business travellers will depend on the pace of vaccination programmes internationally – and across Europe, in particular. But he hopes that within five years the sector will have recovered to the extent that a direct route from Bristol to New York will have been launched.
He was speaking on the dawn of the Government giving Britons the green light to travel legally outside the UK on Monday after a devastating year for the travel industry.
The sector has been forced to make sweeping changes in a bid to stay cash positive, with aerospace giants such as Airbus and RollsRoyce among those making thousands of people redundant as part of major restructures.
Bristol Airport too, like transport hubs around the country, was dealt a blow when the UK banned travel in an attempt to curb the spread of Covid-19.
In 2019, the airport was handling 8.9 million passengers a year and was forecasting 9.2 million for 2020 – before the coronavirus crisis struck.
As a result of the pandemic, the airport only had a quarter of its usual traffic last year and most of those were people who travelled before the first lockdown in March.
Bristol Airport, which directly employed around 400 people before coronavirus, has also had to make about 30 per cent of staff redundant. Of those remaining, half are still on furlough – and some have been away from work for more than 12 months.
Mr Lees says the airport has “tried to consolidate” job losses, with staff such as the airport’s shuttle bus drivers working in the city temporarily during the pandemic.
“The pandemic is still having a major impact,” said Mr Lees. “There has never been such an impact on aviation in its 100-year history.”
Mr Lees believes it will take the industry years, rather than months, to recover, with many people remaining cautious about travelling overseas.
“Hopefully we won’t have any more lockdowns in the UK, but Europe is a bit behind. I think we are talking about two or three years. It’s not going to be a quick ‘flick the switch’,” he said.
From Monday, Britons will be able to fly to countries including Portugal and Iceland, but Mr Lees does not think everyone will want to holiday abroad straight away.
“People have different levels of appetite for risk – not everyone is going to the pub, for example, and it will be the same for travelling by air. I believe we will see people returning in the fullness of time but it’s just how long that time takes.”
He believes a document, with “some degree of validity”, is vital for being able to reopen the world to travel again.
“I think vaccine passports are going to be important for people wanting to travel abroad. When I had my vaccination, I was given a little card, and can that really be taken as credible evidence?
“Anyone could have made that up so having something which has some degree of validity to it will give it greater credence than someone handwriting something that could be bought illegally online.
“Ideally it would be a single app that was available worldwide but unfortunately trying to get anything agreed politically globally is very difficult. But [an app] would bring greater levels of security than a handwritten, possibly easily forged, piece of paper.”
According to Mr Lees, the Government has the “right overall approach” to reopening air travel but says more clarity is still needed – and beyond June 21 too.
“While things are improving in the UK and this region it’s not the case around the globe. So having a riskbased approach is fundamentally the right thing to do.
“Where there are countries getting to the place we are, with people getting vaccinated across society, the opening of travel corridors is key.”
But Mr Lees has called on the Government to reduce testing restraints for countries with a higher vaccination rate and lower death rate than the UK.
“Israel, for instance, has a higher vaccine rate and lower death rate than ourselves so why would you need to test? But absolutely where there are high levels of infection in certain countries, put in those stringent requirements”.
Bristol Airport is seeing demand for its domestic routes already, but is dependent on the devolved nations having the same corridor status as England moving forward.
In the last week, Scotland and Northern Ireland have eased restrictions so people from those nations can travel to England, which has driven a big uptick in flight sales.
When asked if the cost of air travel will increase post-pandemic, Mr Lees says he is “not convinced”.
“There is a lot of speculation about it. I think the airlines are more keen than ever to keep prices competitive. I don’t think it will get cheaper but I don’t think it will be a massive price escalation. We are working extremely hard to maintain it. At a time we wanted to recover it would be perverse to be increasing the cost.”
He does believe, however, that business travel could change – not to any major extent – but the types of people travelling will.
“It’s not just people who are carrying around a briefcase any more,” he explained. “We have found during the pandemic there are a lot of people coming from Northern Ireland who are travelling down to Hinkley Point C [nuclear power plant] in Somerset and engineers travelling to oil rigs off Aberdeen.
“There are also people going on NHS training courses to places such as Glasgow. They are all business travellers. Business travel will be different but it won’t disappear.”
According to Mr Lees, Bristol Airport is well positioned for recovery.
Package holiday and airline operator Jet2 is opening its new Bristol base – following a slight delay caused by the pandemic – in July, creating 200 jobs. It will base three aircraft in Bristol and will be operating up to 56 flights a week. The airport is also now easyJet’s biggest base outside of London and it will continue to offer a wide range of routes too.
Mr Lees said: “We have a really good mix of airlines. I think some of the smaller airports around the UK will struggle to attract all of the routes and airlines back and that is some in our region. But I think we are really well positioned because of our relative scale.”
The airport is also planning to launch a number of new routes in the next three to five years, including a long-awaited direct flight to New York.
Bristol previously had a direct route from the city to Newark, operated by Continental Airlines, which ran from around 2005 to 2010. In the years since there has been much interest in the revival of a New York route.
“We have plans to launch new routes reflecting where people want to go, including to New York. We did previously have a route and it is on my target list,” said Mr Lees.
“It is one of the key locations people from our region fly to, so it’s not about stimulating new demand; it’s about catering for existing demand.”
The airport is also looking at potentially launching routes to Dubai and Istanbul.
“We are considering locations where people are driving to the South East from our region to get on a plane,” he added.
Aside from the pandemic, the last 12 months has been a challenging one for Bristol Airport which has had its expansion plans rejected by North Somerset Council in early 2020.
The transport hub lodged an appeal against the local authority last year, with the process starting in January. The expansion has divided opinion across the region.
Business organisation CBI said the proposals to increase capacity from 10 million passengers a year to 12 million would help meet the region’s growing demand for air travel, create new international opportunities for South West businesses and be a “significant step” towards the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda.
But those campaigning against the proposals claim the expansion could be harmful to the environment, creating noise and air pollution, and damage the habitats of some wildlife.
The inquiry to decide on the expansion plans is set to open on July 20 and is scheduled to sit for 16 days. Mr Lees is confident Bristol Airport will win on appeal.
“I completely understand people will be concerned about any development of any industry but I think people need to look at why we are doing this,” he said.
“At the moment there are 2.5 million people who travel to the South East of England to go on short-haul flights. We want to provide a local offering that is a more sustainable solution as people don’t have to drive as far.
“But it has to be done in the right way so we are not causing issues for those who live near the airport. We are a regional asset and a gateway for our region, and we are confident about the appeal as it’s not flying in the face of Government policy.
“We are not building a new runway, we are making the most of the existing one. We believe we are doing the right thing and in a considered way.”
Looking to the future, Mr Lees says the airport is still on track to become carbon neutral by 2025, despite the challenges of the pandemic.
“We are making inroads with some of our energy coming from offshore wind and we are continuing to invest in onsite solar, with some on top of buildings at the airport,” he added.
“By 2025 we will still require some offsets – we are looking at a backstop date of 2050 for when we don’t need to offset – although I would like to think it would be earlier.”
I think vaccine passports are going to be important for people wanting to travel abroad DAVID LEES