LONDON – Bristol Airport, located in the South West of the UK last week announced that they have launched consultation for their expansion masterplan to 2040, as the airport looks to keep up with the growing demand for air travel and establish its self as a major player.
The airport is looking at plans which would allow it to introduce international services, with it eyeing up the ever popular and high in demand routes to Doha and Dubai. While the airport is currently able to handle the A330 and 787 Dreamliner, flights with these types are very rare spots out of the airport, with TUI UK being the only one to operate them during their busier summer periods.
In a press release announcing the consultation the airport said that it currently handles more than 10 million passengers a year, provides more than 5,000 local jobs and contributes £2 billion to the regional economy, which it says would almost double if they are able to proceed with this planned expansion.
Dave Lees, Chief Executive Officer, Bristol Airport said: “We constantly look at trends in air travel and we’ve been pleasantly surprised that people want to continue to travel by air.”
“We’ve seen since the pandemic a real resurgence in terms of people wanting to connect with friends and family across Europe as well as across the world and that will inform our plans as we go forward over the coming years.”
“The masterplan will look at what further development might be required to meet this growing demand for air travel and we’d welcome input from people to help shape our plans.”
Plans Met with Resistance
While the airports plans would allow for jobs and generate great economical benefits to the local area, they have been met with resistance, which would not be the first time the airport has seen push back for it’s expansion plans, previously this lead the UK Government to have to get involved, as it looks to favour plans to extend other airports in the UK, rather than the costly and widely conterminal London Heathrow 3rd runway plans.
Mr Lees added: “We recognise there will be concerns about carbon emissions resulting from Airport growth and the implications for climate change. So we are bringing forward proposals for what we consider to be responsible growth, growth that is both within the current UK carbon budgets required to meet net zero for all emissions by 2050, and with measures to achieve net zero airport operations by 2030. Meanwhile, we are also committed to working with partners in our region on aviation decarbonisation.”
The pans could be a hammer blow and be the final nail in the coffin for Cardiff Airport in South Wales, should they be accepted and allowed to move forward, the Welsh airports main attraction over Bristol was it’s larger runway, however the new plans would all but put an end to hopes of a revival of the South Wales airport.
Once completed the airport could see around 15 million passengers per annum, which would also mean an increase in aircraft movements from 85,990 to 100,000 per year, with the airport looking at moving into the transatlantic and pervious mentioned middle eastern destinations.
On a busy day during peak period this would result in an extra 35 aircraft movements, and while the airports currently night flight restrictions would remain, it is planning to increase night flights by 1,000 on average, around per planes per night during the busy periods.
The dark grey areas show the planned expansion of the runway and taxiways, the airport has said that the extension on runway 27’s threshold will take it up to the boundary of the A38, but is not only needed to help improve current operations, but will also allow the required length to the runway for long haul services.
The plan shows that for this vision to become a reality the airport wouldn’t need to move outside of it’s current boundary, but in addition to these new services, the plan also lays out a much needed upgrade for the airport, with plans to include travelators, jet bridges and expand on the terminal building.
