The number of passengers using the Isle of Man Airport fell sharply in September. Around 59,500 passengers passed through the terminal whereas in September 2011 some 64,300 used the Airport, a decrease of over 7.5%. Whilst a fall in traffic was expected, as last year hundreds of Commonwealth Youth Games visitors had to switch from sea to air travel as poor weather cancelled ferry departures, the decrease turned out to be significantly greater than anticipated. Over 4,800 fewer passengers used Ronaldsway, the largest fall in traffic since the winter storms caused a drop of 8,100 in December 2010 and the lowest September throughput for the Airport since 1996.
The September figures were greeted with disappointment by Ann Reynolds, the Airport’s Director. “After an unexpected boost to traffic in September 2011, I was expecting a slight decrease for last month, but the outturn is a far greater drop than anticipated.” she said. “Again, I have looked at how UK and Channel Islands airports performed last month and the provisional UK CAA statistics showed that two thirds of them also saw decreases. Moreover some significant airports, such as Belfast City, Liverpool and East Midlands had decreases greater than the Isle of Man. In addition, I have looked at how our traffic decrease is spread throughout the routes and regions we serve and it is clear that the slump in passengers is pretty well across the board.”
Excluding the new Norwich and Oxford routes which started this year, only the Bristol service, which showed a very slight increase of 0.5%, and the British Airways London City route, saw positive results. Indeed the BA London City route carried nearly 850 more passengers that Aer Arann did on the route last year, a 22% increase. The new routes to Oxford and Norwich continued to do well adding between them some 860 passengers to the total.
Of the remaining services on the Island’s network, Liverpool suffered badly with a 1,760 passenger decrease, falling 11.5% over 2011, much of this due to the traffic diverted last year from the sea crossing. Another massive impact was from the withdrawn Southampton service which last year generated over 1,700 passengers. In addition, Birmingham passengers fell by 16.6%, Edinburgh by over 11% and Luton, which also is a reduced frequency, by over 25%.
Regionally, whilst the North West saw a significant fall of over 2,200 passengers – some 7.7% - the London traffic actually increased overall by 2.4%, helped by the London City and London (Oxford) routes. The South and Southwest traffic was hit hard by the withdrawal of the Isle of Man to Southampton service earlier this year and fell by 46%. Numbers travelling to the East and North East of England were boosted by the highly successful Norwich service and rose by almost 14%, whilst Scotland saw a decrease of 8.3% and the Midlands traffic fell by 16.6%.
