Flights won’t be affected
BUDGET carrier Ryanair said yesterday its flights from Teesside would not be affected by a decision to ground twice as many planes as usual over the winter period in an effort to cut costs.
“There has been a lot of speculation recently about airlines cutting routes or frequency from Durham Tees Valley Airport. We are not,” said Ashley Casey, Dublin-based sales and marketing executive for Ryanair, which earlier this year said it would be cheaper to keep 20 planes on the ground than put them in the air.
Ms Casey said Ryanair’s three routes from Durham Tees Valley airport - to Alicante, Barcelona Girona and Dublin - enjoyed “very high load factors”, although she declined to reveal whether they hit the company’s declared 85% minimum load factor, which it said it needed to break even next year.
She denied that Ryanair, which launched a £1-a-seat sale on its Tees Valley routes this week for November and December flights, was between a rock and hard place as fuel prices escalated and consumers cut discretionary spending.
She said: “People are flying anyway, we just want to encourage them to fly with us”.
“The difference between us and other airlines is that we have cash in the bank.
“We are in a very good place. We have revenue that covers us.
“If the price of oil does increase, we can guarantee that we are still going to be there for our customers. We will weather the storm.”
She admitted that the company had made some poor hedging decisions, which had left it paying more for oil than competitors who had hedged less.
Commenting on the forthcoming break-up of the BAA monopoly, which will see Gatwick sold first, Ms Ashley said increased competition between the London and Scottish airports in BAA’s former portfolio would see landing fees fall.
When that happened, she did not rule out Ryanair looking at new routes from Durham Tees Valley.
Business travellers in particular would welcome the reinstatement of the Tees Valley/Gatwick route, which was cut in the summer of 2006.
“At the moment, we are not prepared to pay the high costs at these airports,” she said. “The three routes that are operating out of Durham Tees Valley are operating really well, which bodes well for further development.”
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