Should Doncaster Sheffield Airport be saved?
And a radical proposal to do so...
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More than 33,000 people have signed a petition to save Doncaster Sheffield Airport after its owners, Peel Group, said it had launched “a review of strategic options”. Peel said in a statement earlier this week that “aviation activity on the site may no longer be commercially viable” and it has “never achieved the critical mass required to become profitable”. The strategic review is expected to take six weeks.
The airport is highly-rated by those who use it and is important to the local economy. I have flown from there myself. It is small compared to the UK’s largest airports but modern, reliable, quick and well-staffed. It was named the UK’s best airport by Which? three years in a row before the Covid-19 crisis. The photo above shows Boris Johnson boarding a plane at the airport during the general election campaign in 2019.
“The airport is local to me and it is a welcome addition to our community who use it for holidays abroad instead of travelling miles to a bigger airport,” says Linda Simmons, one of the thousands who has signed the petition. “There are not enough local ‘hubs’ in the UK and closing down would not only be detrimental to the local economy but go against the government’s policy to ‘level up’ north/south divide and also increases carbon emissions where people then have to travel further to get to other alternative airports, which is contradictory to the climate agenda.” That’s from Amanda Davies-Day, another signatory. “Doncaster Sheffield Airport might close and meanwhile Heathrow are turning people away and causing travel chaos? Where is the levelling up?” Rod Belt asks.
Doncaster Sheffield Airport carried 1.41 million passengers in 2019, the last year before Covid-19 struck, according to figures from the Civil Aviation Authority. This was 94.4 per cent more than five years earlier, making it the fastest-growing airport in the UK after Newquay, which is far smaller. However, it only carried 0.5 per cent of all passengers at UK airports that year, making it the 21st largest airport, just ahead of Exeter and just behind Cardiff. Heathrow, the largest, carried 80.9 million and had a share of 27.2 per cent, followed by Gatwick and Manchester.
The reason that Peel has made this announcement now is that Wizz Air said in June that it was scrapping flights from Doncaster Sheffield Airport, meaning TUI is the only airline with a base there. Flybe, which also used the airport, collapsed in early 2020.
The impact of the airport closing would be significant for the local economy. Around 800 jobs at the airport itself would be at risk but other businesses would also be hit. For instance, more than a quarter of the beds at the 77-room Crown Hotel in Bawtry, which is five miles away, are taken each night by staff working at the airport, according to the BBC. Doncaster was given city status in May as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, but the optimism generated by that announcement has now taken a big hit.
However, there is another side to this debate. If the UK is to cut carbon emissions and get to net zero by 2050, isn’t it inevitable that air travel has to decline and airports will therefore have to close?
According to the government, the answer to that is no. Domestic and international air travel accounts for 7 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions, according to the government’s Decarbonising Transport report published last year, but the way to cut pollution is through new technology and fuels, not fewer holidays, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said. “The transport decarbonisation plan, the first in the world, is not about stopping people doing things: it’s about doing the same things differently,” Shapps said as he launched the report. “We will still fly on holiday, but in more efficient aircraft, using sustainable fuel.”
If we take the government’s position here - and I agree that telling people to go on holiday less is not a sensible way to cut carbon emissions - then there is a strong case for saving Doncaster Sheffield Airport given the benefits to the local economy and the fact the UK’s airport capacity is stretched anyway. Even if you think cutting air travel is essential to reducing carbon emissions, closing an airport is not necessarily the answer - there are likely to be unintended consequences. For instance, what about the carbon emissions of those who instead of flying from Doncaster for their holiday just fly from somewhere else instead? They will have to drive or get the train to Manchester airport, which is 66 miles away, or Leeds Bradford, which is 52 miles away, or East Midlands, which is 58 miles away.
So if the airport is worth saving, how can it be done? Firstly, I think there is little to be gained by a row with Peel Group, which is run by tycoon John Whittaker. The company bought the airport in 1999 (it is a former RAF site and has one of the biggest runways in the UK) and launched it as an international airport in 2005. Whatever the rights and wrongs of their decision to consider closing it, Peel has invested in the site and so have local authorities, with the Great Yorkshire Way road linking the airport with the M18. The Covid-19 crisis, the collapse of Flybe and Wizz Air’s exit have clearly put a strain on the airport.
Secondly, there are potential solutions. One of these is for local people to step in. In 2018, Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, agreed a £40 million deal to buy Teeside International Airport from Peel. He tweeted about that deal on the back of the news about Doncaster Sheffield…
That deal attracted criticism due to the potential costs facing the local authority and a lack of transparency. The debate was still going on this week…
Teeside is a much smaller airport than Doncaster Sheffield - it carried just 148,000 passengers in 2019 - but local options should be explored. I don’t just mean the local authority buying the airport from Peel, but what about local businesses, households and the council clubbing together?
This may sound fanciful, absurd even, but it is what levelling up could really look like - local areas taking control of their own destiny. One example of this happening on a far smaller scale is communities stepping in to rescue their local pub by buying it - this growing trend was covered by The Times last weekend here.
The technology is available to raise money rapidly through crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, Crowdcube or others. If every person who has signed the petition to save the airport put in £10 that would be £330,000 straight away. If the 1.4 million passengers who used it in 2019 put in £10 that would be another £14 million. Households are obviously facing a cost-of-living crisis so many people will understandably have no interest in doing this. But businesses and wealthier people in the area could also put in more than £10. That £10, remember, would be lower than the cost of travelling to Manchester, Leeds Bradford or East Midlands airport if Doncaster Sheffield does close. Furthermore, if the airport does boost the local economy then the area should get a return on its investment.
I don’t know how much money Peel Group would want to consider selling the airport, or how much cash would be needed in the short-term to fund operations. The £40 million paid for Teeside offers a guide. The accounts for the year to March 2021 for Doncaster Sheffield Airport Limited, the most recent available on Companies House, show a pre-tax loss of £9.5 million for the year on the back of a 48 per cent drop in revenue to £6.1 million due to the grounding of passenger planes. The company had net liabilities of £24 million, with the value of its assets offset by debts.
What this project would need is someone to take the lead and organise the fundraising. It may fail. If enough money can’t be raised, well maybe the airport isn’t actually that important to the area anyway. But at least the option was explored. Isn’t it worth a go before it’s too late?