Management at Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LJLA) aims to meet the needs of more of its customers in a bid to build greater passenger growth.

Mark Povall, director of air service development at LJLA, is leading the drive to appeal to more leisure and business travellers from across the region, he said:

“There are 1.5m passengers travelling from our unique catchment area, which is Liverpool city region, North Wales and West Cheshire, on package holidays from Manchester, when they could be travelling from here.”

Holidays, including package deals and charter markets, are highlighted as particularly important areas for further development, especially those linked to Mediterranean destinations.

Low cost carrier easyJet, LJLA’s biggest operator in terms of passenger numbers has its own subsidiary package holiday operation.

Mark Povall continued:

“We have to talk to the big package holiday operators, like Tui and Thomas Cook, and also engage with easyJet Holidays, and Ryanair, to serve the Mediterranean market.”

LJLA’s target is to re-establish links to an international hub, which would enable passengers to and from Liverpool to connect with international flights from an established hub.

LJLA was previously linked with Amsterdamn’s Schiphol, one of Europe’s busiest airports, for almost three years through Dutch carrier KLM but the service was dropped in 2012 after a change in KLM’s top management led to network cuts.

Mark Povall said that Liverpool had re-approached KLM, as well as other national carriers such as Lufthansa and Air France:

“We would love to get KLM back.

“They know the market and are strong in the UK. We are talking to them about the possibility of a hub operation.

“It’s a case of looking at where the opportunities are and where the gaps in the market are and at which airlines could serve those markets.

“It could be an Italian airline or an easyJet or Ryanair. You have to know the market and who is expanding and growing and has the capability to fly here.

“But Liverpool needs to be put on the global map, so people in Shanghai or Washington can look on their booking system and see Liverpool.

“If the city wants to achieve its targets we have to have a connection to a hub, ideally Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt or Heathrow.

“It has to be with one of the main carriers so you can interline, or check baggage all the way through to your destination.

“We have to link Liverpool to major European cities and business cities.”

Liverpool currently serves nearly 60 destination, but management at LJLA acknowledge that there are gaps in the market that the airport has not met for business routes to Germany and France:

“There are big business cities there and they are important inbound markets for Liverpool, but we’re not served very well for those cities,

“We want to enhance the links we already have, for example, getting the best frequency for business and leisure travellers.

“Frequency is quite important. For Paris, for example, we only have one flight a day and we should have two because it is a big business centre.”

The airport has set its targets for route development, but it is also aware that it must work closely with its existing operators to get the best service for passengers:

“easyJet and Ryanair make up 90% of our business, so we have to work closely with them and support them where we can.”

However, LJLA is also working to court smaller operators to encourage them to expand their routes or increase flight frequency.

Recent successes have included the Hungarian budget airline Wizzair, which will be more than doubling its weekly frequencies from four flights a week to nine. Flybe, which operates an Isle of Man service, also added a Belfast link just this month.

Mark Povall cited Romanian carrier Blue Air as a good example of pressing the case for Liverpool with new operators. LJLA made first contact with Blue Air at one of the industry’s regular” Routes” conferences, that help to pair international airports and airlines:

“If we hadn’t been at Routes Marseilles and met them they would not have come here.

“Blue Air was a great opportunity for us. They put in a Bucharest flight in December and will fly to Bacau from March.”

It was revealed that LJLA’s active pursuit of an airline to start operating from Liverpool is a complicated and lengthy process due to the operating costs that airlines face:

“An aircraft is an expensive asset and the cost of flying a daily route somewhere is significant.

“So we are not selling LJLA to airlines, but the Liverpool city region, and we have to persuade that airline to invest a multi-million pound asset into the region.

“It is a big decision, and not a quick decision they make. There’s long lead times. Currently we’re looking at summer 2016, so the conversations we’re having now are 18 months down the line.”

Liverpool’s “brand recognition” around the world is phenomenal, added Povall:

“If you ask anyone abroad about the UK we’re probably the third best, behind London and Edinburgh, and we, as a city, have to take advantage of that to get the routes the city deserves and link to those potential markets.

“At Routes conferences, when you talk to airlines from all over the world they all know about Liverpool, so you have already made the first step.

“Then you have to explain all the fantastic things going on here, like the economic growth, the fantastic, safe, night life for visitors and our universities.”

To this end, Mark Povall said that LJLA is now working much more closely with the region’s stakeholders, such as regeneration body Liverpool Vision, Liverpool’s Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), the ECHO Arena and BT Convention Centre, and other businesses like hotels, in its bid to sell the city to airlines:

“We’re doing a survey of businesses in Liverpool about where they travel to and where people who travel to see them come from.”

“That kind of information is so valuable to the airlines.”

Source

Image Credit

Words: Peter Cribley