London City Airport has big plans.
In May this year, London City Airport was the UK's 15th busiest airport by passengers. Looking back to 2019, it was the 12th busiest. The UK CAA shows that the airport – famous for its short runway and steep final approach – then had 5.1 million passengers, some 1.4 million short of its existing passenger limit. (It also has an annual traffic movement limit of 111,000.)
Airports are no different from any other business: they must plan ahead irrespective of the current environment. So it is that London City – the closest facility to central London – is seeking permission to grow passenger volume to nine million by 2031, a 38% increase over its current limit and a third higher than the three million it expects in 2022. It foresees reaching pre-pandemic traffic by 2024.
The growth would be mainly through increasing flying on the weekend – for noise reasons, it is currently shut between 13:00 Saturday and 12:30 Sunday – and slightly more flying at either end of the day.
It means a potentially significant amount of additional flying without increasing infrastructure. It'd go hand-in-hand with London City's increasing focus on leisure flights, often higher-end. As you'd expect, it has stressed expansion would be through very quiet new-generation equipment.
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The latest airline passenger data is from May. According to the UK CAA, London City had 291,200 scheduled passengers, just 65% of the 451,000 it had in May 2019. There's a long way to go until it reaches, let alone exceeds, its pre-pandemic traffic. Nonetheless, it is getting there: May passengers were up by 17% over April.
Over three-quarters (77%) of May's passengers were international. The short trip to Amsterdam, some 209 miles (336km) away, was its top market, served by both BA Cityflyer and KLM.
Amsterdam had 41,843 passengers, as shown below, making it the largest market. The Dutch city had about one in every five of London City's international passengers – making it is crucial. (Note that the CAA's figures include all traffic: point-to-point and transit. It does not mean that 41,843 were only going to/from Amsterdam.)
Between July 8th and October 29th, the end of the aviation summer season, London City has a total of 42 scheduled routes. BA CityFlyer – obviously by far the airport's leading airline – has 32. These include three new offerings so far this year: Luxembourg (introduced on March 27th), Thessaloniki (June 25th); and San Sebastián (begins July 8th). And, starting this winter, is Salzburg (December 9th).
Also new is Swiss' l'odyssey, which on July 8th was meant to connect London City with the Normandy city of Deauville, but a last-minute hiccup prevented the flight from operating. I was going to be on it. While it is just a temporary delay, the service, which will run on Fridays and Sundays using a 27-seat Saab 340, will be the first time Deauville has had UK flights since October 2017.
What do you make of London City's ambition? Let us know in the comments.
Route Development Analyst – James lives and breathes route development. Educated in Air Transport Management at Loughborough and Cranfield, James was Market Opportunity Analyst at London Luton Airport and Chief Analyst at anna.aero. Now writing data-driven analysis for Simple Flying. Based near London, UK.
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