Examination of Witnesses (Questions 374
- 379)
TUESDAY 1 MARCH 2005
MR ALBERT
HARRISON AND
MR UEL
HOEY
Q374 Chairman: Good morning, gentlemen.
I should start by offering an apology for the fact that you were
due to give evidence some five weeks ago and, having travelled
to Parliament to be with us, of course, we all fell foul that
day of fire alarms and votes. I am afraid that is how Parliament
is; in fact, the Committee today will be depleted because of last
night's events in Parliament in terms of the vote on terrorism.
Mr Tami left London at some ungodly hour this morning to be with
us, and I am grateful to him for doing that, Mr Campbell is en
route, but rather than waste any more of your time five weeks
after you first appeared, as we have a quorum I thought we would
start the evidence session and let our colleague join us when
he is able. I wonder if I could kick off with getting to the bottom
of the desire, it would seem, from Belfast International for a
single airport for Northern Ireland. I say "it would seem"
because in terms of the evidence that has been given you expressed
disappointment at the outcome of the White Paper, saying that
it "fell short of expectations" and argued strongly
that Belfast International should be "the airport of choice".
Do you want Belfast International to be a single airport for Northern
Ireland?
Mr Harrison: Mr Chairman, good
morning, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak—I
feel somewhat vertically challenged sitting here. Belfast City
Airport is a fact of life; if we were starting off with a clean
sheet of paper there is no doubt about it, that you would have
one airport for Northern Ireland, in my opinion. You would gain
from the economies of scale and there are lots of advantages.
We would probably, I think, be about the 45th biggest airport
in Europe—my colleague will correct me if I am wrong with
the numbers—if we had one airport, if you take the number
of people who fly to City of Derry Airport, Belfast City Airport
and Belfast International, but we are where we are. We are not
saying that Belfast City Airport should be closed in any way,
shape or form. Since I have arrived at Belfast International I
have never actually voiced that particular opinion; it is there,
it is an asset, it should be used for the benefit of Northern
Ireland PLC, but what we have to try and do is make sure that
the airport assets that we have got are used for the betterment
of the whole of the province and we are ideally situated for the
whole of the province. There was a major disconnect between the
Regional Air Services Study and the White Paper. Basically there
was a RASCO stakeholders meeting in Clarence Court on 25 March
2002 and that was a publicly debated document. That document showed
that Belfast City Airport, with the planning constraints, would
be about 2.2 million people, but the airports could work together
in a complementary type role and Belfast International could grow
to just under about 10 million. The City of Derry number was half
a million, 800,000, something like that. The White Paper when
it came out in December 2003 bore no resemblance to what had been
debated in public, there was a major disconnect, and that showed
that Belfast City Airport was then growing to something like 4.4
million people. Technically, I believe there are some flaws in
that logic; I can go into the detail if you want or we can drop
you a little note on it. That was something that was never debated,
so that was why we were effectively disappointed: there was a
public debate, everything understood, the stakeholders were fairly
comfortable with it—you can argue about some of the forecasting
models that they used etc -but the punch line was that the White
Paper that came out bore no resemblance to RASCO, and we believe
there are technical flaws with it. What we need to do in our opinion,
and we have said so in our document, is that we are happy to work
with Belfast City Airport, we can complement each other for the
benefit of Northern Ireland PLC and without any negative environmental
impacts for Belfast.
Q375 Chairman: You are opposed to
the change in the Planning Agreement at Belfast City, is that
correct?
Mr Harrison: Effectively, yes.
We do not actually believe it does any benefit for Northern Ireland
PLC. If you have a look at the market, the marketplace at the
moment, the UK is pretty well served and there are some areas
in fact where we have, in my opinion, too many services, and in
the back-up document we have given you we have actually carried
out a comparison of the number of airlines operating from Dublin
to various destinations in the UK, Europe and beyond, and when
you compare that with what is out of Belfast then there are some
areas that are over-served. Northern Ireland has suffered
compared to most regions in the UK; in the last 10 years we have
lost 56 services that have started and failed. Dublin, in the
meantime, has lost about 15—in fact, somewhere along the
line there is a reason for it. I am sure a question on competition
will come up, but the thing is that the UK is well-served, Europe
is under-served, North America is slightly under-served, we need
more hubs towards the East, so if Belfast City Airport grows there
will be displacement. The displacement could weaken us, which
makes it more difficult for us to then go out and compete in the
wider marketplace. Already we carry a burden of £1.2 million
a year having our own police force. We are the only airport—that
is an undesignated airport in the UK—that has got a police
force. There is no assistance from Government for that amount
of money and it is a burden that we have to carry; somewhere along
the line there has got to be a balance achieved. Hopefully that
answers it.
Q376 Chairman: We also understand
that you have been granted leave to seek judicial review of the
application.
Mr Harrison: Basically it is the
process that actually concerns us at the moment. The situation
is that we are querying the process that has been deployed. We
had RASCO, RASCO was public and then out comes the White Paper,
completely different. There are some discrepancies in BCA's terminology,
the nature of their request varies. They want a review of the
form of the Planning Agreement, then they want an increase in
the number of seats on offer for sale, then they want the cap
removed on the number of seats offered for sale. They are talking
about a 5% growth until 2030 which would give them 7.5 million
people. If you take 45,000 air transport movements and you divide
that figure into those sorts of forecasts, you are looking, even
on just what is in the White Paper, at 89 passenger seats per
aeroplane. For Edinburgh the current average number of seats is
77 and for Birmingham 78, so somewhere along the line there is
going to be a step function change in the size of aircraft for
all those targets to be achieved. We just want to make sure that
the process is open and that it is a full public debate; primarily
that is what we are interested in, which is why we have been delighted
with the fact that this Committee has been formed to look into
the strategy for Northern Ireland.
Q377 Chairman: Do you accept that
some just see the judicial review as a way of pushing the decision
further back?
Mr Hoey: Thanks, Mr Chairman.
It is not especially in our interests to delay the process because
in the local press the planning service have stated that while
the whole matter is under review they will take no action, so
there is no logic in us delaying the process in that regard because
the airport will continue to grow, which would serve us no purpose.
Mr Harrison: City Airport are
currently breaking the Planning Agreement, they are over the limit,
so actually delaying the process is of no benefit to us. If we
had not done this then theoretically the planners should have
actually taken action against Belfast City Airport for breaking
the Planning Agreement, and they have acknowledged that they are
breaking the Planning Agreement. There is not a lot of benefit
in us actually delaying it under those sorts of circumstances;
what we want is to have a clear, open debate that actually then
can come up with a strategy for Northern Ireland. The DoE will
look at this on a narrow basis, purely from the planning regime
point of view; DRD will obviously have to get involved with the
strategic issue and I think we need to sit back—because
the White Paper did fall short of expectations—and decide
what is the best thing for Northern Ireland in the round.
Q378 Chairman: To a lesser degree
some have said that opposition by Belfast International for further
Government aid to City of Derry Airport could be seen as trying
to restrict another competitor. Would that be a fair analysis?
Mr Hoey: Our view of City of Derry
Airport is that it is fine for the airport to function; if the
local authority wish to maintain the airport we have absolutely
no issue, however we are very aware that the people in the North
West are an important part of the catchment for Belfast International
Airport. We are very supportive of getting access to that region
and we would wholeheartedly support infrastructure development
which would assist both the people living in the North West and
visitors to that region, availing them of the range of services
which operate through Belfast International. We believe that there
will always be a greater range of services and a greater frequency
of services available through Belfast International and we believe
that road infrastructure and surface infrastructure development
will assist the market to flourish if given access to that range
of services. In terms of the current bid to, as we understand
it, lengthen the runway, we are slightly confused as to the reasoning
for it. We understand that Falcon Holidays operate 200 plus seat
aircraft on a two to three hour range from City of Derry's runway
to Spain, yet apparently Ryanair can carry no more than 140 passengers
on a sector which is about a third of the length, to London. We
do not understand the background to that. We also are aware from
some of the background work that has been done regarding City
of Derry Airport, Cranfield University presented I believe at
an open forum at the Guildhall in October 2003 some estimates
of how traffic at City of Derry Airport could grow, and that the
basis of it was that around 90% of the growth which was foreseen
to take the airport up towards a million passengers a year would
be displacement of existing traffic which already operated through
Belfast International and Belfast City Airport. We would question
the value for Northern Ireland as a region should that happen.
Broadly speaking, we are very supportive of the northwest region,
believe there should be development of road infrastructure and
would wholeheartedly support that, but at the end of the day City
of Derry Airport in distance terms is the same distance from Belfast
International as Dundee is from Edinburgh, Blackpool is from Manchester
or Brighton is from London; indeed, to put it into more local
terms, Mullingar from Dublin. Our biggest concern would be if
state subsidy were forthcoming to facilitate development of City
of Derry Airport, we would clearly have to look at that in terms
of how that affected us as a private company from a competitive
perspective.
Q379 Chairman: Do you think that
if City of Derry Airport failed—I am not suggesting for
one moment that it would do—that you would simply see more
services going to Carrickfinn?
Mr Harrison: I personally do not,
but we can disagree, it is not a problem. People will want to
go where there is frequency of service to a range of destinations
that they want to go to. We are 57 miles apart, in the grand scheme
of things that is not far. If we can improve the roads throughout
the North West then that will open up the whole of the region,
not just for passengers but for freight and everything else that
is associated with it. No, I personally do not see Carrickfinn
growing. The other thing on the Ryanair question, they currently
operate a 180 seater aircraft from Lubeck to Stansted; it is a
two hour sector, the runway is exactly the same length. How can
they operate out of Lubeck but they cannot operate out of City
of Derry? It has nothing to do, I believe, with runway and safety
areas; we have actually had some consultants look at it and they
cannot come up with an answer. We believe Ryanair tankers fuel
in, so they are actually landing a bit on the heavy side; if they
picked up more fuel at City of Derry, City of Derry Airport would
actually make more money and the aircraft would be able to land
at a lighter weight, with a shorter runway.
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