BOSSES at Durham Tees Valley Airport (DTV) are being asked what has been done over the last 12-months to secure its future.

At a meeting of the Durham Tees Valley Airport Consultative Committee today (Wednesday, June 26), Andy Foulds, commercial director at Peel Airports, revealed that DTV planned to trial flights to Bulgaria for one month in August 2014.

He added that there would also be a summer programme of flights to Ibiza next year.

But Peter Foster, a representative for the Durham Association of Local Councils, said he was disappointed at an apparent lack of aviation activity over the last year.

He intended to put his concerns to Mr Foulds and ask what developments had been made, but the director had to leave partway through the meeting so the committee agreed to put the question in writing to Peel.

Mr Foster said: “In the last 12-months I reckon there has not been a lot of movement at this airport.

“What makes up an airport is all sorts of aviation activity to bring money into the airport.

“The only movement there has been is the number of caravans we have now got parked here.

“There is more advertising about those caravans all around Darlington and Durham, saying ‘come and park your caravan at the airport’ than there is about flights.”

Passenger numbers at DTV hit their peak in 2006 when almost one million passengers used the airport, but by last year that figure had dropped to less than 200,000.