Bristol: CAA Provisional Statistics Update

Use this prefix for new threads for Bristol Airport
Without wanting to troll through all the previous posts here, do you happen to remember what the monthly reductions were during the recession? I seem to remember us discussing how Bristol airport in particular could be used as an economic indicator, prior to the recession and coming out of the recession. It is certainly looking like we're heading into another slowdown. It's a case of fingers crossed and shut your eyes!
 
Without wanting to troll through all the previous posts here, do you happen to remember what the monthly reductions were during the recession? I seem to remember us discussing how Bristol airport in particular could be used as an economic indicator, prior to the recession and coming out of the recession. It is certainly looking like we're heading into another slowdown. It's a case of fingers crossed and shut your eyes!
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I show below BRS monthly totals for 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 until August.

2009 stands out as a really bad year though it became less so as the year played out and was actually better than many regional airports.

January 2007 is the month when the airport had numerous diversions and closed for a day because of the runway resurfacing incident, and April 2010 and 2011 relate to the volcanic ash closure in April 2010.

Notice how November and December have seen a steady reduction in passenger numbers since 2007, due to fewer sun charters in winter and the policy of easyJet and Ryanair to cut back on rotations in winter. January and February have fared better, or less badly anyway, mainly because the ski charter market, both charter and scheduled, has held up well.

2011 as a whole is likely to end up with broadly the same passenger numbers as 2010.

January 316,374 -9 378,685 +19.8 324,408 -14.3 323,496 -0.3 330,047 +1.5

February 396,517 +3.5 434,256 +9.5 322,088 -25.9 365,837 +13.6 344,771 - 5.7

March 452,197 +4.4 506,133 +12 392,122 -22.5 429,425 +9.5 394,884 - 8.5

April 437,016 -0.4 491,393 +12.5 416,965 -15.1 364,814 -12.5 489,720 + 33

May 514,995 -2.6 591,837 +15 507,099 -14.3 519,778 +5.4 534,654 + 2.9

June 577,396 +4.5 614,783 +6.5 543,504 -11.6 590,864 +8.7 572,764 - 3.1

July 617,587 +7.9 652,179 +5.7 630,124 -3.2 644,258 +2.3 625,207 -3.0

August 640,997 +5.7 704,668 +9.9 672,483 -4.6 686,271 +1.3 672,904 -1.9

September 591,607 +3.4 607,915 +2.8 592,230 -2.5 608,478 +2

October 531,468 +0.2 535,793 +0.9 527,412 -1.6 549,513 +3.6

November 402,230 +7.6 355,486 -12 338,389 -4.8 320,527 -5.8

December 405,015 +9.1 356,080 -12.1 348,512 -2.1 313,243 -10.1

Annual 5.883 mppa +3 6.229 mppa +5.9 5.615 mppa -9.9 5.723 +1.9
 
Interesting set of figures there. Do you think the winter reduction in charters especially during the winter months has been largely filled by the likes of Easyjet and Ryanair offering flights to the likes of the Canaries, Cyprus and North Africa in some cases? I remember a conversation I once had with a former LBA director. I remember asking him why the airport didn't pursue more charter flights, he replied with "is there really a need as more and more passengers are choosing to book their holidays independently" At that time I didn't agree with him because when you compared LBA with other regional airports such as BRS, LTN and NCL those airports had a far greater percentage of charter flights compared with scheduled flights. Looking at the situation today, what was apparent then seems to have become the norm at most UK airports with fewer and fewer traditional charter flights.

With regards to the overall picture looking at your figures there, percentage wise it is looking like things are slowing down again when comparing month by month figures with last year?
 
It's certainly true that easyJet and Ryanair have largely taken over the winter sun routes - between them there are 5 x weekly to Tenerife again this winter for example, with probably just two weekly charter flights to TFS, or it may be three (I haven't checked the TOM and TCX schedules).

It wasn't so many years ago that Bristol had seven or eight weekly TFS winter charter flights, but that was before the locos became involved on these routes.

2011 as a whole will probably come out with roughly the same number of passengers as last, though it has to be remembered that the airport management reckoned the volcanic ash cost BRS 150,000 passengers in 2010 so parity with last year would really be a reduction.

The reason this year is down is simply that there are fewer seats available each month - as high as 8% in some months so the percentage reduction in passenger numbers isn't too bad.

September's figures will be interesting because easyJet kept its extra aircraft (eleventh) right through the month instead of departing in mid September as it usually does. If loads across the board held up it could mean a figure approaching the 608,000 of September 2010 which was the best September in the airport's history.

BRS has been in a slot of 5.6 mppa to 6.2 mppa since 2006 and is unlikely to make serious forward progress until the economy improves. In this it is little different to many airports. It was fortunate that it managed to keep its head above the surface during the recession unlike some airports that nearly drowned and some are still struggling for any sort of fresh air.
 
September 2011

September's figures will be interesting because easyJet kept its extra aircraft (eleventh) right through the month instead of departing in mid September as it usually does. If loads across the board held up it could mean a figure approaching the 608,000 of September 2010 which was the best September in the airport's history.
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Bristol Airport has issued its own monthly figures for September 2011wich show that the airport handled 610,900 passengers in the month, up 1.63% on September 2010, which is a record September for the airport.

Scheduled passenger numbers (about two-thirds of the total traffic) were up 6.23% though scheduled atms were up 8.58%; scheduled domestic passenger numbers were down 6.9% (sched dom atms were down 17.10%); charter passenger numbers were down 6.54% with charter atms down 7.11%.

Bristol does not publish 12-monthly rolling figures, just passenger numbers to date in the current calendar year. In 2011 up to and including September the airport has handled 4,537,548 passengers, up 0.94% on the same period last year with 2.83% fewer atms.

CAA September stats were not available for any airport when I looked a few minutes ago (they seem late this month) but can expect to show more than 610,900 passengers because, for some reason, the airport's own monthly passenger figures are invariably less than those published by the CAA.

Addendum

CAA stats now published and show that BRS handled 617,821 passengers in September 2011 up 1.5% on the previous September. Atms for the month were down 2.2%.

Rolling 12-month figure is 5,764,996 which is up just 0.1% on a year ago.
 
[textarea]Record month for passengers at Bristol Airport and 12% are from Wales


Passenger numbers at Bristol Airport topped 610,000 last month – its busiest September on record.

The number of people passing through the terminal was up 1.5% year on year, and surpassed the previous high of 601,432 recorded back in 2008.

The airport said that 12% of its passengers live in South Wales – the same level as Devon and Cornwall. Around half reside in the greater Bristol area.[/textarea]

Full report at this link

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-i ... z1bDueg0hG

This report is in a Welsh newspaper confirms my previous post. It highlights the loss of passengers from the Principality. 72,000 extra passengers for CWL in September would have increased its passenger numbers by 50% but of course things aren't as simple as that.

The main reason for the increase in passenger numbers was easyJet's retention of an additional A320 (11th based easyJet aircraft) for the entire month.

Robert Sinclair, CEO at BRS, confirms that economic conditions continue to be difficult for leisure and business travellers, though the airport has seen a resurgence in business travel, and he doesn't expect to see 'such high passenger numbers over the winter'. Not sure what he means by this. Numbers are always down in winter but does he mean in comparison with last winter?

The CEO believes that September's figures are an encouraging sign that strong growth will return in 2012.

He went on to say, “To meet this anticipated demand we are already working on a range of further enhancements to the airport to accommodate the increased numbers and improve the overall passenger experience ahead of next summer.”

The linked newspaper article is based on an airport press release and broadly similar articles have appeared in a number of newspapers and on news websites which is why I have quoted a little more freely than would normally be the case in order to respect copyright.
 
I can see where the BRS CEO was coming from when, commenting on September's record passenger numbers, he said the winter would not see the same sort of performance.

Looking at the first week of the winter programme I see a reduction on available seats in the order of 5-6% compared with last November which itself was disappointing. I had been expecting at least par with last November or even a slight increase.

This is further evidence of how BRS (and a number of other regional airports) is becoming primarily a summer airport with the winter a sort of holding process.

November and the first part of December have been particularly poor in recent years as the strong ski season is yet to kick in. The last time I looked easyJet was operating a similar ski schedule to last winter with around 30 weekly rotations and I expect the ski charters to be around the 14-16 a week that has been the figure for the past few years.

A look at November from 2007 to 2010 shows how the early winter programme has dramatically reduced.

Nov 07 402,000 passengers

Nov 08 355,000 passengers

Nov 09 338,000 passengers

Nov 10 320,000 passengers

Nov 11 305,000 passengers? Anything above that would be encouraging.
 
Leeds Bradford is certainly one of those other seasonal airports, not helped by it's major operator Jet2 which seems to be becoming a seasonal airline. Airports like Leeds and Bristol along with many other regional airports will have to surpass their summer passenger totals if they are to maintain their current annual passenger figures. Unfortunately airlines are less willing to start new winter routes during harder times and winter ski routes tend to show reductions when the economy isn't fairing as well. I suspect airports will need to become cleverer with their fee charging in the future with cheaper offerings through the winter to encourage more airlines to continue flying through the winter months.
 
October 2011

CAA stats report 532,532 travellers using the airport in October 2011, down 3.1% on October 2010. Atms were down 5.6%.

Rolling 12-month figure was 5,747,993, down 0.5% on a year ago.
 
Oh dear. That downward slippery trend again. We could really do without another recession but it's starting to seem almost inevitable now.
 
Oh dear. That downward slippery trend again. We could really do without another recession but it's starting to seem almost inevitable now.
Click to expand...

It's been a funny year for Bristol - no consistency re monthly passenger figures movement.

Four months have been up and six down but with no obvious pattern.

This year will be the sixth consecutive one to fall in the range 5.6-6.2 mppa.
 
DfT forecast for UK airport passenger numbers in 2020 and 2050

I'm a bit surprised that no-one has picked up on the post I did recently in the Aviation Industry forum regarding the DfT's forecast for UK airport passenger figures for the years 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050.

I reproduced the figures for 2020 and 2050 for the current top 20 airports.

Perhaps the Aviation Industry forum is not well visited so I thought I'd mention the individual airport figures in the forums of the more popular airports on forums4airports.

The Dft is forecasting sparse growth until 2020 at many regional airports.

Bristol Airport is forecast to be handling 6 mppa in 2020 and 12 mppa in 2050.

The Stop Bristol Airport Expansion people have gleefully picked up on the forecast stagnation over the next eight years on their website.
 
November 2011

CAA stats show BRS handled 313,368 passengers in November 2011, down 2.2% on November 2010. Atms were down 10.3%

Rolling 12-month total was 5,740,843, down 0.3% on a year ago.

On 24 October I did a post highlighting the decline in winter traffic at BRS in the past few years and used the month of November as an example.

Because of the known reduction in seats for November 2011 against November 2010 which itself was down on November 2009 and so on, I calculated that around 305,000 was likely to be the total for this November and posted then that anything above that would be encouraging, so over 313,000 passengers is certainly that.

A decrease of 2.2% in passengers against a 10.3% fall in atms is good going in the current economic climate.

It doesn't seem that the loss of sun routes from CWL this winter has contributed to BRS's decent performance either.

CWL was down 76% and 65% on Alicante and Malaga respectively in November but BRS was itself down 12% on Alicante with Malaga no change.

Impressive gains were made on the likes of Jersey (up 57% to nearly 2.5K Passengers, though Blue Islands remaining for the winter to compete wth Flybe explains that); Aberdeen (up 50% to nearly 3.5K thanks to an extra daily rotation on weekdays and larger aircraft); Dublin (up 19% at nearly 25K due to Aer Lingus Regional competing with Ryanair); Amsterdam up 18% at 24K; Edinburgh up 10% at 24K; Brussels up 10% at over 4K.

The most startling in percentage terms was Fuerteventura up 106% at 6.2K but due to easyJet on the route in winter for the first time challenging the charters.

Notable decreases were the easyJet routes to Madrid (down 24% at 5.2K); Prague (down 22% to 4.5K); Funchal (down 21% to 2.4K); Berlin Schoenfeld (down 20% to 5.4K), all due to fewer rotaions on all these routes.

The Ryanair routes to Poznan and Kaunus were both down 18% to 2.4K and 2.2K respectively.

Sharm el Sheikh was down 67% to 1.8K, due to fewer charter rotations.
 
More passengers on fewer aircraft

I read recently that the BRS CEO said that the airport now carries nearly twice as many passengers than it did a decade ago on not many more flights, and he's right.

A look at CAA stats shows that in 2002 3.415 million passengers were carried on 47,000 flights whereas in 2010 5.723 million were carried on 54,000 flights.

This means that a rise of 68% in passenger numbers was accomplished by a rise of just 15% in flights.

The average aircraft load in 2002 was 73 and in 2010 it was 106, a rise of 45%.

Something for the nimbys and other objectors to stick in their pipes and chew over.

I suppose the people to lose out are the potential crews and spotters. :shok:
 
That has been well achieved by Bristol! Such figures, I'm sure many airports are envious of.

An partial explanation could be the rising population nationally as well as globally. Don't forget a lot of people travel into the UK now as well UK residents travelling out and so I'm sure this is partially the explanation. In addition, I believe a survey carried out numerous years ago, showed that people were a lot more willing to travel, by car/train etc, to fly on a cheaper ticket, in stead of paying more for for a more convenient flight. I'm sure this is probably people saving money due to the recession.

It's such a shame such figures are not reflected around national airports.
 
Aircraft utilisation at Bristol has improved on a like-for-like basis vis-a-vis passenger numbers in recent years.

In 2006 BRS handled 5.7 million passengers from 66,000 flights whereas in 2010 5.7 million passengers were handled using only 54,000 flights.

Bristol has really stood still since 2006 in annual passenger numbers.

2006 5.7 mppa 2007 5.9 2008 6.2 2009 5.6 2010 5.7 2011 5.7 (est)

My alter ego did a post on another forum recently pointing out that England's mid-size airports had behaved according to two models since 2006 and through the recession.

Bristol, Liverpool and Leeds-Bradford had largely stood still though there had been some movement up and down during the six years whilst Newcastle and East Midlands had both lost over 20% of their passenger numbers.

These are the annual figures in mppa from 2006 on the left to 2011 (est) on the right:

NCL 5.4, 5.6, 5.0, 4.6, 4.3, 4.3

EMA 4.7, 5.4, 5.6, 4.6, 4.1, 4.2

LPL 5.0, 5.5, 5.3, 4.9, 5.0, 5.2

LBA 2.8, 2.9, 2.8, 2.5, 2.7, 2.9
 
Thanks for the LocalYokel.

[offtopic]Both Newcastle and East Midlands have lost and missed out on key Low-Cost operators over the years and have also seen a reduction in the amount of flights operated.

East Midlands lost easyJet as a key operator, Thomson/Thomas Cook/Ryanair presented virtually no growth and only now have BmiBaby and Jet2 decided to fill in the gaps other operators are leaving.

Newcastle doesn't boast any dominent operator and hasn't for numerous years. Ryanair serve only a couple of routes and easyJet/Thomas Cook/Thomson show no interest on making any large increases in traffic apart from continuing the typical routes and only Jet2 has introduced new destinations and opened the scope for more routes. Newcastle does have; Air Transat and Emirates however as a key to open up more International Connections, and these routes should be able to sustain themselves.

Lets just hope the next few years manage to prevent the double-dip recession and passenger numbers start to improve![/offtopic]
 
December 2011

CAA stats for the month not yet published but BRS's own figures on its website show that 336,870 passegers used the airport in December this year, up 8.70% on the airport's own figures for December 2010.

Atms in the month were down 6.48% so such an increase in passenger numbers with fewer seats available is very good going.

I've checked the January 2012 Mayfly and available seats are 10% down on January 2011 and over 16% down on January 2009 so it will be interesting to see how the airport performs this month.

The airport's annual total is 5,714,954, up 0.83% on 2010.

For some reason the BRS pasenger numbers are usually less than the CAA stats though the percentage increase/decrease figures are invariably broadly similar.
 
December 2011

CAA stats now published and, as usual, show higher numbers of passengers in the month and for the year than BRS's own figures.

CAA say 340,541 passengers used the airport in the month, up 8.8% on December 2010. Atms were down by 0.3% whereas BRS said they were down by 6.48%.

In December 2010 the severe snow caused widespread difficulties across the country and BRS was affected, albeit mainly by flights being cancelled because of snow at the destination airport. It may be that the BRS figures worked on all flights timetabled to be flown, whether they did or not, whereas the CAA only counted flights that flew in December 2010.

Whatever the reason for the discrepancy the result is still encouraging with nearly 9% more people flying on virtually the same number of flights as December 2010.

Rolling 12-month total was 5,768,011, up 0.8% on the same period last year (ie the calendar year).

It's a satisfactory performance though 2010 was affected by both volcanic ash in the spring and the snow in December.

My forecast at the start of 2011 was for a flat year or slightly down on 2010. In the event, I wasn't far out.
 
January 2012

BRS own figures now published (CAA stats out next week which will vary slightly from the airport's own figures as it always does) although the web page is showing the figures as February 2012.

315,600 passengers were handled in the month, down 3.59% on January 2011. However atms were down a huge 12.65% so the much smaller percentage reduction in passenger numbers suggests bigger loads on at least some flights that did operate.

Clearly the problem was with the charter market. Charter passengers were down 19.28%, which roughly approximates to the overall loss in passenger numbers for the month, from 21.04% fewer charter flights.

Having got 2011 more or less correct this time last year I will suggest that 2012 will again be flattish. Might see a small percentage rise or fall in passenger numbers by the end of the year.

If so it will be the seventh consecutive year where annual passenger numbers have remained in a fairly tight band, though the past two years have both seen small gains.

2006 5.71 mppa
2007 5.88
2008 6.23
2009 5.61
2010 5.72
2011 5.77
 
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