Liverpool loses out on lucrative air links due to Brexit fears

Uncertainty over Brexit has cost Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LJLA) two opportunities to link the city with key European hub operations.

The airport has revealed that two airlines who had planned to launch routes to European hub airports, opening up wide-ranging travel routes around the globe for passengers from Merseyside and the North West, have both pulled out.

One had got as far as filing for landing slots.

Robin Tudor, head of PR and communications at LJLA, revealed the blow to airport plans at a meeting of the Cheshire West and Chester Council post-Brexit policy commission.

Mr Tudor told councillors: “The impact that we’ve seen from Brexit has been the uncertainty that it has created and has meant that airlines have pulled back from making decisions on growing business.

“It’s not unique to Liverpool, I have to say, but we have certainly experienced it – certainly in recent months.

“Two airlines that we had been speaking to in particular, they had committed and actually filed for slots to run two new services for Liverpool – not big in terms of passenger numbers for us, but to two really important destinations which would have opened up what we call ‘hub access’.

“We don’t have that at this moment in time, so the significance of both these services was that it would get us into a global market.

“And the airlines have been quite clear in telling us they have pulled back from a major decision despite making forward slot applications, because of Brexit.

“They said it is simply because of the uncertainty that Brexit creates for them as a business they have pulled back from making decisions.”

LJLA lost its ‘European hub’ access when Dutch carrier KLM axed its link between Liverpool and Amsterdam in March 2012.

It allowed passengers to link up with scores of other airlines at Schipol and fly to destinations around the world.

LJLA is one of five UK airports backing Heathrow Airport’s expansion plans as it would provide an opportunity to tap into the London airport’s huge international hub operation.

Mr Tudor told councillors that Brexit fears had also impacted bookings, due to passenger concerns about ‘freedoms of flight’ or the right to fly and land a plane from one country to another.

“It just appears that this uncertainty means that passengers are perhaps not booking that weekend away, or short half-term breaks or Christmas breaks, that we may have seen if it wasn’t for Brexit,” he said.

He admitted that passenger growth at the airport has slowed since November, but he added that the airport is not “going backwards”.

However, he said Brexit could provide some opportunities for LJLA.

Currently there are EU restrictions on supporting less commercial flights, even if there is a need for the service.

He said: “The example I would give is a flight, perhaps for us into somewhere like Heathrow – a key airport which it may be difficult to justify purely in commercial terms for an airline to do it.

“But with Government support for a route to make it sustainable, that might be something that would be very interesting.

“At the moment, there are restrictions from the EU in UK Government being able to do that, so if those restrictions are lifted then it might give the UK Government a bit more flexibility to actually intervene and help.”