ROUTES EUROPE: Plymouth Airport to Close in December

Posted 07/05/2011

Sutton Harbour Holdings, the owner of Plymouth City Airport in the UK, has announced that it will close the loss-making facility at the end of this year, just months after also selling regional carrier Air Southwest to Eastern Airways.  The company says the facility “has been loss-making for a lengthy period of time” and the board has concluded there is “no realistic prospect of trade improving” in the near future. 

Sutton Harbour secured a 150-year lease on the airport site in 2000 and launched Air Southwest in 2003 to operate from there.  However, changes in the regional airline market in the UK and more notably the operational restrictions at the facility have meant it has never been a commercial success - its short runway means that the Bombardier Dash 8-300 is the only 50-seater permitted to operate from there.

Air Southwest provided flights from Plymouth to domestic destinations, the most notable being to London Gatwick, although this route was closed in February this year and its link to Newquay is the only current scheduled service.  The subsequent sale of the airline to Eastern Airways, which has no plans to retain its Dash 8 turboprops, made the closure decision inevitable.

Sutton Harbour will now concentrate on waterfront regeneration and its core marine-related businesses.  It has not revealed what the airport site will be used for in the future, although commercial housing is most likely.  A planning application is understood to have already been made for construction of housing on the airport’s former second runway. 

The local council is still fighting to keep the airport open though and revealed in a statement that it is still working to secure a sustainable future for the facility.  "This has included talking to different potential airport operators, 16 commercial airlines as well as the Civil Aviation Authority to examine all possible models for the future running of the airport," it said.

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