‘A sad loss for Blackpool’ as unprofitable airport to close

Disappointment and nostalgia for holidaymakers and workers as Balfour Beatty confirms regional airport to shut on 15 October
French aviator Henri Farman in his Farman biplane
French aviator Henri Farman at the Blackpool Air Show in 1909. Photograph: Walter Doughty for the Guardian

The McDonalds only found out when they got to the check-in desk at Dublin airport on Wednesday morning that their annual holiday to Blackpool was going to have to be cut short this year. Austin and Jean came to the seaside resort for their honeymoon in 1965 and have been loyal visitors ever since. This was their 43rd trip – and their last, they said, downcast, after learning that Blackpool airport is to suddenly shut down next Wednesday, the day before their return flight with Aer Lingus Regional was due to head home.

Balfour Beatty, which bought the airport for £14m in 2008, put it back on the market in August, saying losses of £1.5m were unsustainable. The firm warned that if a decent offer wasn’t forthcoming by 7 October then it was curtains for Blackpool. Sadly for the airport’s 110 staff, as well as the hundreds more indirectly employed, no one wanted to buy an unprofitable old wartime relic built to accommodate 1.5m passengers each year which only attracted 235,000 in 2013 (to put that in context, Heathrow’s five terminals process 191,000 people every single day). The fact it was voted third best regional airport by the Which? guide earlier this summer (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/11048735/Southend-voted-UKs-best-airport.html) counted for nothing.

The deadline came and went and on Tuesday afternoon Balfour Beatty put out a statement confirming the airport would close on 15 October, saying it was “a very sad day for the airport, which has a proud aviation history and a loyal, appreciative customer following.”

June and Peter Curwen were two loyal but unhappy customers at the airport on Wednesday. The couple, from Kirkham in Lancashire, were due to fly out to Malaga on Saturday with Jet2. They had made a special trip to the airport to join a small but steady queue of worried, mainly elderly passengers, at the airline’s information counter, to find out whether their holiday was off. They were told they’d be flying from Manchester instead, and would have to get a shuttle bus for the hour-long journey.

“Using airports like Manchester is okay for the young ones, but not for people our ages,” said June, 81. “There’s too much going on with mini buses, different levels, travelling between terminals. Here, you just get out of your car or taxi and you’re fine.”

Jet2, which transports 78% of Blackpool’s passengers, decided to move all flights to and from Blackpool to Manchester from this Friday. The final Jet2 service to the Lancashire seaside will touch down in Blackpool from Alicante at 9pm on Thursday.

City Wing, which operates flights to Blackpool from the Isle of Man and Belfast, will cut both services when the airport shuts next week. In a statement the firm said the stoppage was just temporary, for an initial four-week period while the local council and businesses try to seek a way “to ensure Blackpool Airport will re-open with a sustainable new business model.” Aer Lingus will also stop its Dublin-Blackpool shuttle, which is why the McDonalds are going to have to return home on the final service on Wednesday, a day earlier than planned.

Travellers flying out on Wednesday this week were surprised when told they would still have to pay the £10 “airport development fee”, which has been levied on all passengers passing through Blackpool in recent years. Always unpopular, the fee was set to “assist us with funding improvements and in order for us to grow”, according to airport literature. Staff seemed embarrassed to have to send one lady back from the check-in desk to buy her ticket from a special machine, with one onlooker branding the fee “diabolical, in the circumstances.”

Blackpool has a proud history of flight dating back to 1909, when the first “aviation meeting” was held in the town’s Squires Gate area. A Manchester Guardian photographer was on hand to record the historic occasion, with the paper sponsoring the “slowest flight” competition. Two hundred thousand spectators attended, guzzling 500 cases of champagne, 36,000 bottles of beer and 1,000 hams. In 1931 the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, opened a new aerodrome at Blackpool’s Stanley Park, which was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force during the second world war. After the war, a commercial airport was developed on the original Squires Gate site, with traveller numbers booming in the 1970s and 80s with the development of package holidays: Cosmos used to advertise “Landladies’ Specials” offering winter breaks in the Mediterranean sun to Blackpool hoteliers.

Those were arguably the glory days of the airport – and the ones Graham Spray, 72, looks back on most fondly. Between 1970 and 80 he worked as a baggage “loader”, rubbing shoulders with the many stars who used to pass through the airport on their way to their glitzy shows on the piers and in the Tower Ballroom. “I saw Tommy Cooper propped up by a wall drunk, Cannon and Ball, the Nolan Sisters, everyone,” said Spray, who had come to the airport for “one last look” on Wednesday.

He arrived in Blackpool as a fresh faced young lad from a mining village in Derbyshire, did one season at Pontin’s and never left. He loved working at the airport, he said – largely because of the travelling opportunities. “We used to get concessional travel, paying 10% of the ticket price – I went to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Rhodesia for £55, Jersey for £2, the Isle of Man for 9 shillings. “I feel very sad that it’s closing,” he said.

So where did it all go wrong? “We just haven’t been able to persuade enough airlines to commit to expanding their bases here,” said John Rankin, airport director. Attracting passengers was not a problem, he insisted, claiming that Jet2 planes were on average 97% full and that “we are the best performing base for customer satisfaction.”

But the fixed costs involved in running an airport are so high that it needs volume to survive, and Blackpool just didn’t have it. In recent months just a handful of services ran each week, but it still had to employ eight firemen and three air traffic controllers for every flight. A few years ago the operator also lost a costly legal battle with Jet2 over whether it was contractually obliged to provide such services for early morning and late night flights.

Some blame the local council for abandoning the airport after selling it in 2005. Many grumble that the council has ploughed £11m into a new four-star Holiday Inn hotel in the town centre, in a bid to entice political party conferences back to the resort, yet won’t support the airport. In response, Blackpool council said: “We are not airport operators or hoteliers – we are a council … Purchasing a loss making passenger airport, at a much higher price [than it will cost to develop the Holiday Inn site] has an extremely high risk and, as such, we could not prudentially borrow for that.”

Yet many fear that without an airport, the already struggling town will suffer further. Andy Woodman, who does the books for one of the resort’s hotels, was taking pictures in the terminal on Wednesday to put on a Facebook group called Blackpool’s Past. “It’s a very sad loss for Blackpool,” he said. “We’re going down enough as it is, unfortunately. Hotels are already closing and now the airport – it’s not going to do us any good.”