Newquay surprises as Britain's fastest growing airport

Sixty per cent rise in travellers after £5 departure fee is axed

The runway at Cornwall Airport Newquay (Flickr)

Britain’s fastest-growing airport saw passenger numbers soar when a £5 departure fee was axed last year, it has been claimed.

Newquay airport in Cornwall handled 48 per cent more passengers in 2016 — with a surge immediately after the £5 “Airport Development Fee” was scrapped at the end of March.

In April, an average of 1,018 people a day passed through Newquay, an increase of 60 per cent on a year earlier. By May, passenger numbers had risen to 1,225 a day.

In common with Norwich and the now-defunct airport in Blackpool, Newquay imposed an additional fee on departing passengers, which had to be paid locally. The fee was resented as it added two extra stages to the departure process: users had to pay at a machine and then hand the ticket to an official. Once it was removed, Ryanair reinstated flights to and from Newquay.

Tim Jeans, chairman of the airport, said: "The development fee was a real deterrent for passengers, especially those who used the airport regularly. With the scrapping of the fee, we've attracted more airlines, more routes and recouped more revenue than the fee had raised.

"The airport is now connecting Cornwall to the whole of the U.K, Ireland, Germany, Spain and Portugal, something that would not have been possible if the fee has remained."

Remarkably, the number of domestic routes from Newquay offered this summer exceeds the total of UK services from Heathrow and Gatwick combined.

London’s two biggest airports have a dozen destinations across the UK between them, while Newquay has 13 — from Aberdeen to the Scilly Isles.

The figures are likely to be seized upon by the aviation industry, which is lobbying hard against Air Passenger Duty: the tax on departing travellers which adds between £13 and £73 to an adult fare. For long-haul flights, APD is set to rise to £75 from April. This week the bosses of easyJet, Ryanair and BA's holding company, IAG, joined forces to demand a reduction in taxes on airline passengers.

The fall in the value of sterling also appears to be benefiting Newquay.

Al Titterington, the airport’s managing director, said: “The effect Brexit has had on the pound against the dollar and euro means this year is likely to see an even bigger rise in the number of staycations than we have seen in recent years.”

The closure of Plymouth airport in 2011 improved the prospects for Newquay. It is slightly closer to Plymouth than is Exeter airport, which is located on the “wrong” side of the city for most people in Devon.