Houchen tells Telegraph. 'I'm just naive'

Borothruandthru said:
Thing is the Airport was doing OK around 2010.
I was having flying lessons at the time and they just pressed the self destruct button. They decided to make passengers pay 6 quid to use the baggage carousel.
They fell out with bmi baby who did most of the important routes Inc London.
They doubled landing charges from £5 to £10 making my lessons unaffordable as that's what I was doing taking off and landing 4 times an hour.
The feeling at the time was a deliberate effort to make a loss and force the planning for new houses through.
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It wasn't doing ok in 2010, and was in decline from 2006 onwards, and the recession hammered a nail into the coffin and it wasn't something which could be brought back from the dead. Peel actually got numbers up by 50% from 2002 to 2006, before them it was failing too.

Other airports lost 20% over 4 years post 2006, and that was their baseline, Teesside lost 75% in the same 4 years and kept going down whilst all the others were going back up. When things fail, like the airline sector did, the small guys die first, it's not possible to fight this.

Teesside Airport can't work, as it's a luxury, and luxuries only work 20% of the time. When the luxury option isn't on the table people look to cut costs so they go to the other airports which can do things cheaper, have better facilities and can ride out any economic storms. The only thing which could make TA work is put an additional 2m people next door to it, and delete Newcastle and Leeds, and none of those are going to happen.

Nobody cares about the £6, people using the airport are happy to pay the extra to fly from there and the people who have less money don't complain about the fee as they're never using the airport to get charged it. If the fee isn't paid the airport goes broke faster. The reason the £6 fee is there is because the economics of the airport doesn't work.

BMI and other airlines wouldn't have left if they were making a lot of money at a good margin, but they basically didn't see the point in sharing out resources when they can do that more efficiently at bigger airports. The whole airline industry has had big problems, and TA can't fix this, it's a 0.001% cog in a massive chain and if the chain doesn't work, TA can't work.
 
What an absolute buffoon.

People only care about outcomes. No they don't, they care that things are fair. There could well have been business people better placed to develop that site than the two guys who got it who were Tory donors and the wife of one of them who helped value the land.

If it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, its not a fuckin' giraffe is it Ben?
 
Johnnyweetabix said:
the sad thing is, the airport is brillaint. No queues, no taking liquids or electronics out of bag, close for most of us, nice lounge and duty free etc. I had a 6.20 am flight last week and set my alarm for 5am from Marton. We should be shouting its virtues from the rafters.
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There are no queues as there are no passengers, you should sort of actually want queues, as it means the airport is under load.

All airports are changing to remove the liquids rule, and the electronics thing, but the move will be more gradual. The systems they all already have invested in prior to rule and technology changes still work great and have a long life in them yet, but when these are due for renewal the new systems/ rules will dictate the kind of gear they invest in. Teesside could do this now, as it never had any good gear with good life. So basically the only thing worth buying on the market was the new tech, as this would have the longer life. This better gear won't actually help much though, as it will make little overall difference whilst the industry hasn't largely moved over to the new tech/ rules etc. You might save 15 minutes or whatever but nobody actually notices this, and all it means is the 15 minutes you "save" in a queue, just gets move to 15 more minutes in a bar or shop, effectively spending more money. It's not really a gain unless people are getting to the airport later. People won't get to the airport later though as the times are drilled into them by the wider industry average (and people are generally very cautious when it comes to flight timings). Get there 1-1.5 hours before a domestic flight, 2 hours for a European flight and 3 hours for a long-haul flight etc.

You set your alarm for 5am in Marton, for a 6:20am flight? Surely getting a shower/ ready and the travel sapped an hour of that alone? Seems risky?

I'd love it to work, but I just can't see how it can for more than 25% of the time where the economics of it make it able to compete with the others. The time it takes to build up flights (5-10 years of good numbers) means we will inevitably hit economic problems, and then flights will leave as fast as they arrived, like snakes and ladders.

I've tried to use the airport so many times for meetings in the South West or South, and not once has it been workable door to door, leaving to getting back in, or been able to beat the train, it's been frustrating. It really needs two reliable regular return flights per day to decent other connected hubs in the UK, like London or Bristol but to do it would need to steal numbers from Newcastle and Leeds which would be hard to do.
 
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Used the airport to go to Benidorm in January and the flight with Ryanair was cheaper than Jet2 from Newcastle. Flying to Majorca with TUI a week on Saturday from Teesside. Five of us getting picked up by minibus from the Boro and Stockton to the Airport, taking about 20 minutes. Oh and the minibus is a lot cheaper than going to Newcastle. Use it or lose it. (y)
 
sambaDTR said:
Used the airport to go to Benidorm in January and the flight with Ryanair was cheaper than Jet2 from Newcastle. Flying to Majorca with TUI a week on Saturday from Teesside. Five of us getting picked up by minibus from the Boro and Stockton to the Airport, taking about 20 minutes. Oh and the minibus is a lot cheaper than going to Newcastle. Use it or lose it. (y)
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It will never make a profit, so it's coming out of all our taxes.
 
Just had a report on R4 today too
All directions point to the national audit office crawling all over it.
Even Houchen says he wants that to happen
 
Andy_W said:
There are no queues as there are no passengers, you should sort of actually want queues, as it means the airport is under load.
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Exactly that, the original comment about no queues smacks of someone that does not understand the management of services. It's a sign of low demand and over utilisation of resources, almost certainly incurring irretrievable costs.
 
sambaDTR said:
Used the airport to go to Benidorm in January and the flight with Ryanair was cheaper than Jet2 from Newcastle. Flying to Majorca with TUI a week on Saturday from Teesside. Five of us getting picked up by minibus from the Boro and Stockton to the Airport, taking about 20 minutes. Oh and the minibus is a lot cheaper than going to Newcastle. Use it or lose it. (y)
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That's just it though, the population that are closer to Teesside Airport and have demand for it's limited flight schedule are very unlikely to make it profitable, thus it's probably better to lose it and invest the money in something with a greater long term benefit.
 
BaronSmoggie said:
You should read the circlejerk comments on his LinkedIn post when he posted that letter about welcoming an inquiry. All old men stating that anyone questioning it was trying to prevent Teesside from becoming better.

I may have countered that viewpoint and upset a few people.
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Just had a nosey......🤮🤮🤮

What is it with Tories and not being able to objectively look at at a situation, digest the facts and think "hang on a minute". Straight away, drawbridge is up, straight into good little Tory mode - everyone is wrong and Houchen is right just because he's a Tory. Imagine living life so defensive and blinkered? 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️
 
h_m_boro said:
Houchen - "....I'm right naive me .....but happy"
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I've said on here a few times, the issue with Houchen and the MDC is that absolute lack of professional oversight.

Without that how does the public interest be ensured? Corruption and/or poor decision making can happen without and redress.
 
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