London City Airport will be pitched as a hub to connect Ireland with hard-to-reach places

THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE of London City Airport expects to see more Irish passengers using it as a hub to connect with hard-to-reach cities elsewhere in Europe.

Declan Collier, the Irishman at London City’s helm, said the airport is already seeing traffic from Dublin use it to transfer onto regional and short-haul routes throughout the continent.

“Already, we have people flying through London City to the likes of Luxembourg,” Collier said today. “We will look at targeting other routes, particularly connections through regional cities.”

He added that there is a “real demand” for a connection between Belfast and Paris. He said it is “incredibly difficult” to travel between the two cities because there is no direct service outside the peak summer season.

“Passengers are looking for different ways of connecting,” he said. “We think there are opportunities to connect between Paris and Belfast. We think there are other opportunities to connect from regional cities in France through London City and into Dublin as well.”

Just under 500,000 passengers a year fly between Dublin and London City on flights operated by British Airways and CityJet. It is the UK airport’s third-busiest route after Edinburgh and Amsterdam.

Declan Collier with Queen Elizabeth II

Extension

Collier was chief executive of DAA, which runs Dublin and Cork airports, before moving to London in 2011. He said Dublin is “a very important part of what we do” and suggested that “there’s potential to grow” the route when a £344 million extension at London City Airport is completed in 2025.

Last year, the airport was given the green light to start construction on the development, which London mayor Boris Johnson had long postponed over noise-pollution concerns.

The multimillion-pound investment will see seven new aircraft stands added at the airport, a new taxiway for aircraft to move to and from the runway, and an extended passenger terminal.

Artist's impression of the airport in 2025

“At the moment, we’re doing a ‘Doctor Who Tardis’ operation,” Collier said, referring to the TV programme’s space and time-travel machine, which is famously much larger inside than its police box-shell would suggest.

“The buildings that we are operating out of were actually designed to handle a million passengers. We’re handling almost five times that.”

Collier said the renovation will enable the airport to carry 6.5 million passengers each year. Last year, it handled a total of 4.5 million passengers, an increase of 5% on the previous 12-month period. Construction is expected to begin in June.

‘London won’t disappear’

On the UK’s exit from the European Union, Collier said he didn’t believe there would be a significant collapse in London’s financial and insurance sector as has been speculated.

“I think there will be nibbling around the edges. It will be painful for some people, but we’ll continue to see that grow,” he said. ”Our connectivity from London will be very, very important. In fact, it will be even more important that it is today.”

He said that Brexit will be a challenge, but “London won’t disappear” and added it is well-positioned to remain a “premier global city”.

London City Airport

When asked what his message would be to Brexit negotiators, Collier said: “I’ve said it in my capacity as CEO of London City and president of the World Association of Airports; we want to see the maintenance of a single, European aviation market.”

He said he would need to be able to recruit and retain highly skilled staff after Brexit. Around a quarter of the staff at London City Airport are foreign nationals.

“In terms of passengers’ experiences, we can’t afford to see blockages when people are coming into the country,” he added. The airport is earmarking funding to handle any changes made to immigration rules.

Business travel

Just over half of the airport’s passengers are business travellers, but Collier maintained that City is not a business-only airport and is seeing growth in the number of leisure passengers it handles.

He attributed this to the rise of ‘leisure economy’, a fare type that offers some of the perks of business class for a lower price.

Last year, the airport was acquired by a Canadian consortium of pension funds for £2 billion. Irish businessman Dermot Desmond paid just £23.5 million for it in 1995.

Collier said the new owners are taking “a long-term view of what they want to get” and are looking to invest “over a 30-year period”.