Durham Tees Valley, commonly known as Teesside Airport, was – until 2006 – a rising star. It had investment from Peel Holdings, who pumped a stack of money in and attracted a number of airlines, including Ryanair, Wizz Air, ThomsonFly, and based aircraft from bmibaby (later replaced by Fly Globespan).  This was in addition to the regular schedules from British Midland, Eastern Airways, KLM and more. It was operating at almost 1 million passengers per year.

Then things started to go bad.

The based airlines left, British Midland dropped the London Heathrow route, Ryanair stopped and started various routes, as did Eastern Airways and Aer Lingus Regional. We lost charter routes, including popular Turkish routes with the demise of Goldtrail and Holidays4U. In 2011 we had less than 200,000 passengers, and the airport was forced to introduce an extra passenger fee to prop up the finances (the death knell for Ryanair, who don’t like airports that charge extra).

At the end of 2011, Peel Airports, who were largely owned by Vancouver Airport Services, put the airport up for sale.

But yesterday, it was announced that a separate company had been set up within the group, which had bought the shares back from Vancouver. It has effectively been ‘sold’, and the future looks rosy again.

This doesn’t change the situation that there are very few flight options and income is low. But lets be positive about it. It’s a great chance to start afresh and attract new investment, routes, partners, non-aviation related business, and move forward. The airport is loved by its nearby (nearly 2 million) population and they’d love to fly here, both on holiday and business routes, if we just had the airlines.

The airport is also home to the Serco International Fire Training Centre, and a major base for Cobham’s Flight Inspection and military support fleets.

So let’s give it a chance.

Over the weekend, Ryanair announced it would be opening a base at Budapest with four based Boeing 737-800 aircraft. The airline will operate routes to 31 destinations from the airport, starting 17th February 2012.

Now, Wizz Air has announced it is to base an additional two Airbus A320 aircraft at Budapest to boost its schedules. It will operate flights to 21 destinations, increasing weekly frequencies from 67 to 129 flights.

This will strengthen the presence of both airlines at the airport, and make it very difficult for any new or restarted national airline in Hungary to gain a foothold in the future. It also seriously diminishes the full service options for passengers.

Aside from cargo, Leipzig is a moderately busy airport for passenger services, with around 2.3 million passengers passing through each year on domestic, intra-European, and holiday flights.

But naturally the vast majority of movements are those affiliated with DHL, and cargo carriers such as Bluebird, Swiftair, Kalitta, Europe Air Post, Air Atlantique, ABX, RAF Avia, Aerologic, Aviastar etc. This sees a lot of A300, B737, B757, and B777 types, but most interestingly also a lot of AN-12, AN-26 and TU-204 aircraft operating from countries to the east.

Cargo movements are largely between 10pm and 2am, but some operate during the day and it’s often possible to see many aircraft parked up during the day.

Spotting
The best place to spot at Leipzig is the viewing terrace atop the Administration Building next to the terminal. The outdoor terrace is open 24 hours a day, making it ideal for catching those nighttime movements (if a little chilly in winter!). It costs €2.

You can also get good views from the top of the car park.

Hotel
If you want to watch the cargo movements from the comfort of your warm hotel room (with SBS or Flightradar24), try the Globana Airport Hotel. It has rooms facing the airport, but some have restricted views.

Elsewhere
Whilst in Leipzig, remember to look out for the former Interflug IL-18 and TU-134 aircraft at the airport, which are easily seen from the viewing deck. There’s also an IL-62 in the city used as a cafe, and an IL-18 at one of the city’s museums.

DHL Timetable
You can download a handy DHL flight timetable from this link.

Credit goes to Mark Allday for the information in this article.

Luton is already a popular low-cost gateway for easyJet, Ryanair, Wizz Air and others, and it has also made a mark for itself as THE place for biz jets visiting London. On any given day there are up to a hundred biz jets present (admittedly a number are based, or are in for maintenance). So to expand on this seems a good idea.

This article states the airport will look to “consider where modifications are required to optimise capacity, including taxiways, aprons, piers and parking stands, the road network, car parking and the passenger terminal.”

It’s not clear when these changes will take place – presumably it will need a lot of planning. But I anticipate one of the improvements they’ll look to add is a full-length parallel taxiway for the runway, which will instantly increase the hourly capacity of the runway.

This is a major u-turn from previous statements, and it seems we might just get this development. The government has also reiterated that Heathrow will definitely NOT get a third runway.

Naturally there are still a lot of skeptics about the project, especially since it will take many, many years to approve, plan and build, during which the problems at Heathrow and other London airports won’t go away.

What are your thoughts on the plans?

Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan has opened a new observation area for watching aircraft.

Built for people to wave off family, and watch them arrive, it’s also perfect for the enthusiast with its views over one of the runways and many of the parking stands at the terminal.

The area is believed to be indoors, which makes it sheltered and air conditioned, but it’s likely to mean photography is through glass.

Have you visited? What’s the observation area like?

London Southend Airport is really taking off. After years living in the shadows of London’s other airports, the once-popular airport is now on the way back up.

Although for many years it’s been a place to find mouth-wateringly rare aircraft in storage and between owners (which to some extent continues to this day), the airport finally has some scheduled routes to shout about, and a bunch of new infrastructure being built ready for this year’s London Olympic Games. Southend is one of the closest airports to the games, so I expect it will be pretty busy around that period.

Here’s an update on the airport’s growth and plans:

- Runway extension has now been built, with the taxiways all improved and new lighting added. Full runway will be in operation from March.

- Scheduled services to Ireland have started with Aer Arann.

- easyJet begin routes to 9 European destinations from April, with 3 based Airbus A319 aircraft.

- The new control tower and railway station (with fast links to London) have been opened.

- New terminal under construction, to be opened in February. Extended apron and stands almost complete.

- New Holiday Inn under construction at the airport.

I’ll be visiting this year to check out the new facilities and to see what the viewing situation is like with the new roads, runway, hotel and terminal. You may want to schedule a visit to Southend during the Olympics as I think it will get quite busy.

Why not send us a trip report if you use one of the new easyJet routes?

Belfast City George Best Airport has invested  in two £500,000 in two snow clearing machines from Norway. The huge apparatus can remove 6 inches of snow from the entire runway in less than an hour.  Seamus MacMahon, Belfast City Airport’s Senior Fire Officer, is pictured receiving the equipment from Jan Eric, Service Engineer at ØVERAASEN.

So this airport, which is a vital link close to the heart of Belfast for business passengers in particular, should remain open should the white stuff appear again!

We recently spoke to the airport’s Marketing Manager, Stephanie Gehman about the airport, which is relatively unknown to our European readers, but offers an interesting alternative to the other airports on the Eastern Seaboard. So, here’s a bit of information from Stephanie:

Frankfurt Airport Time Lapse Video