Highlands business community urged to get on-board with new London air link

A direct appeal has been made to the north’s business community to use crucial new air services linking Inverness and London.

On 31st March, easyJet will start operating early morning and evening flights connecting the Highland capital with Gatwick.

These weekday services – currently operated by Flybe – are widely viewed as vital to the north economy due to the lack of any other high-speed link connecting the cities.

Last year Flybe sold its 25 pairs of runway slots at Gatwick to easyJet for £20 million.

It prompted business leaders, politicians and the wider community to unify efforts to keep the north connected to London, with campaigns showing easyJet there was an appetite for the early morning and evening flights to be retained.

The landing and departure times at Gatwick could have been used by easyJet – which currently operates flights linking Inverness to Gatwick and Luton – for other flights.

But easyJet moved swiftly to end any uncertainty when it announced plans to enhance connections between Inverness and London as part of a new five-year deal.

The deal, which followed robust discussions among easyJet officials, came after a commercial decision was reached with Inverness Airport’s operator, Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL), supported by the Scottish Government.

It includes ensuring infrastructure at the airport is able to house a larger plane overnight. There is no government subsidy involved.

Included in efforts to highlight the importance for north businesses of air links to London, was an online survey conducted by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, in conjunction with Inverness Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses.

The study – which was launched prior to easyJet’s commitment to the new services – generated 323 responses from 294 businesses and organisations, some involved in key sectors across the region and some with a turnover of £10 million or more, and altogether employing over 40,000 people around the Highlands and Islands.

It indicated the reliance that many businesses have on the ability to undertake a day return trip to London.

The survey also found that more than a fifth of business journeys between Inverness and London are for international connections through Gatwick, with a tenth going for onward connection through Heathrow.

However, the results showed that over 16 per cent of business trips between the Highlands and London are made through airports other than Inverness.

It discovered some people choose to fly direct to Heathrow from Aberdeen, Glasgow or Edinburgh – which are between 100 and 170 miles from Inverness – instead of travelling around London to Heathrow, after flying from the Highland capital to Gatwick.

This suggests more than 50,000 passengers a year are lost from Inverness Airport to other airports because of the lack of an Inverness - Heathrow link.

Ali Gayward, easyJet’s head of Scotland, hopes this trend will change and more people will fly to London from Inverness, instead of going elsewhere.

"It is really important that people – including the north’s business community – support their local airport," she said.

"We saw the huge amount of demand that there was after Flybe announced that it was coming off the route last summer, aiming for another airline to come in and support the route, which we have been able to do.

"With that vociferous response it is really important now that those people – especially business travellers – actually support the route.

"If they are going to then use other options for their travel, it makes a nonsense of all of that campaigning and all of the work that people did last summer to maintain the service."

She continued: "Gatwick offers excellent connections to points throughout Europe and beyond; easyJet alone offers over 100 destinations from Gatwick, so people from across the north are able to access both short and long-haul destinations with ease.

"Gatwick also offers excellent access to London itself. Indeed for so long, so many people have always assumed that Heathrow offers the easiest access into central London, and this simply isn’t the case.

"If you are going to the centre of London, for example to areas such as the West End or perhaps Westminster, it is far quicker and easier to travel from either Gatwick or Luton.

"It is vital that these air services into London are supported, to ensure their long-term sustainability and indeed to retain these vital links to support the north’s economic growth and tourism."

Inbound and outbound services currently connect Inverness to Gatwick and Luton on a daily basis.

Although the number of flights will be reduced once Flybe cuts back its services, easyJet will actually increase its Inverness

London capacity by 30 per cent due to it using larger planes than its rival. A low fares strategy is among the commitments easyJet has made as it aims to promote travel to both cities.

"During the last 12 months we have carried over 120,000 passengers between Inverness and Gatwick," said Miss Gayward, who replaced Hugh Aitken as easyJet’s head of Scotland late last year.

"For this coming year we expect to carry over 185,000 passengers.

"We are just about to start the whole marketing machine that will be promoting the new flights and the added capacity, so very definitely we will be looking to increase those numbers."

She continued: "We are convinced that just the very fact that we are operating these routes, with a good schedule that suits business and leisure travellers, will stimulate an increased number of visitors to the region."

Last year 91,000 passengers travelled on easyJet’s Inverness

Luton route – and the airline aims to raise this figure too.

Flybe – which will close its Inverness base before the end of this month, with the proposed loss through redundancies, following consultations, of the site’s 35 employees – stated increased charges combined with "penalistic" levels of air passenger duty, imposed on UK domestic airlines by Westminster, made services to and from Gatwick unsustainable in the long-term.

The new easyJet Inverness-Gatwick flights will be on Airbus A319 156-seater planes, which are almost twice the size of the current planes used by Flybe on the route.

Miss Gayward stressed easyJet would not be introducing the new services unless there was a sound business case.

"Before we decide to either operate a new route or add any additional capacity on an existing route, we go through a very detailed analysis to satisfy ourselves internally that this is the right use of our aircraft," she explained.

"Obviously when we acquired the Flybe slots at Gatwick there was no guarantee that we were naturally going to operate all the routes that had been operated by Flybe before they sold the slots to us. So we went through a very detailed process of evaluating the destinations and the opportunity and what was the right capacity, so we really wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it was going to be commercially viable.

"We are very excited about how the route is shaping up already."

She will monitor business developments across the area and stay in touch with Inglis Lyon, HIAL’s managing director, to see if there are opportunities for further expansion of easyJet’s north commitments.

"It’s really important for us to maintain the close working relationship we have already with Inglis and the team there because it is important that they keep us appraised of what is going on with various innovations and developments," Miss Gayward commented. "That then enables us to look at what other markets we could fly to, for example if there is growth in a particular industry or sector which has links to other areas of the UK or overseas, then we need to look at what infrastructure needs to be in place to support that growth."

She added: "We really hope that people across the north support our new services to ensure their longevity and potential further expansion."

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