THE chief executive of one of Britain’s busiest airports has said smaller airports such as Durham Tees Valley (DTV) face “an uphill battle to justify their existence”.
Paul Kehoe, who runs Birmingham Airport, said the short-lived cheap travel boom had left the country with twice as many airports as it needs, and named DTV as one of the regional airports that could struggle to survive.
Passenger numbers at DTV, based near Darlington, have plummeted in recent years, from a peak of 735,000 people a year in 2007 to 165,000 last year.
Writing in a national newspaper, Mr Kehoe questioned whether small regional airports were sustainable in the long term and suggested that Britain needed a maximum of eight airports for its population.
He added: “Everybody’s got an airport. Clearly every community wants connectivity but as a country we need very effective airports and scale does matter. To be blunt you’ve got to look hard at the likes of Blackpool, Doncaster, Norwich and Durham Tees Valley.”
DTV has lost a number of its carriers and routes in recent years, which airport bosses have blamed on the rising cost of aviation fuel and an increase in tax on tickets.
A spokesman for DTV acknowledged that minor airports were operating in a “very competitive and challenging environment” but insisted that smaller transport hubs were vital to spreading economic development across the UK.
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