Redundancy threat after flights are grounded

NEWQUAY Airport is expecting to have 75% fewer passengers than forecast this year due to the impact of coronavirus and the collapse of FlyBe.

Peter Downes, managing director of the Cornwall Council owned airport, has been in post for just 18 days and is having to oversee one of the most disruptive periods yet seen in aviation.

In March regional airline FlyBe, which was responsible for the majority of flights from the airport, collapsed and then the airport was forced to close due to the pandemic.

On Wednesday the airport’s operators, Corserv, announced a restructuring which would result in up to 36 redundancies.

The following day Mr Downes gave a detailed report on the latest situation at the airport to the Cornwall Airport Newquay Consultative Forum.

In his report he explained that it had originally been planned to cut 70 jobs from the airport but this had been reduced to 36.

Consultation with staff on the redundancies was due to start yesterday.

“We are working really hard to support affected staff and looking at redeployment opportunities in the wider Corserv group,” he said.

“It is an advantage that other airports that are going through this do not have.”

Mr Downes said that staff who could be redeployed would be offered training and support to help them. Applications for voluntary redundancy would be considered to “keep the forced redundancies at the absolute minimum”.

“Looking ahead for the rest of the year, passenger numbers will be 75% less than original projections for this calendar year,” Mr Downes added.

He said Cornwall Council was in discussions with the government about securing short-term funding to help the airport. Similar requests have been made by other regional airports in the UK.

But he added “the prognosis is two to five years to reach the levels (of passenger numbers) that we had before.”

Mr Downes said the airport had been successful in securing some airlines which would start operating from July, but he warned that the frequency of flights would be less than previously planned and that some of them would use smaller aircraft than FlyBe and so the number of passengers and revenue would be reduced.

Some services would not be returning in 2020 and were planning to come back in 2021, he said.

While the Newquay passenger terminal has been closed during lockdown the airport has continued to operate for emergency services including Cornwall Air Ambulance and search and rescue helicopters.