A WEST COUNTRY airport is to close by the end of year, having lost its flights to London in February.
Plymouth City Airport had been struggling for some time, and its owners said the number of passengers had recently fallen to fewer than 100 a day.
A modal shift from air to rail within Britain has been getting stronger in the last year or two. ATOC said earlier this month that according to the first full analysis of industry figures, rail’s market share on the 10 most popular domestic air routes in 2010 grew to 44 per cent – up from 29 per cent in 2006.
Plymouth enjoys a frequent First Great Western intercity service to London, and the fastest trains take three hours to make the journey to Paddington.
Until February this year the city was served by daily flights to Gatwick, some of which also called at Newquay in neighbouring Cornwall, but these flights were withdrawn shortly after the airline, Air South West, was sold by the leaseholder of Plymouth Airport, Sutton Harbour Holdings.
Air South West is now owned by Eastern International Airlines and continues to operate flights on numerous routes from Newquay to destinations in Britain and Ireland, but its business from Plymouth had become very poor.
First Great Western ran a special train from Plymouth to London last October in just 2h43. FGW managing director Mark Hopwood said at the time that such timings were not yet possible on a daily basis, but that the new record time had 'showed what could be done'.
The far south west is not yet included in electrification plans for the Great Westerm route, and under present proposals would still be served by diesel HSTs after the line has been electrified between London, Bristol and Cardiff.
One of the government's reasons for promoting HS2 is to bring about a further transfer of business from short-haul domestic flights to rail between London, Manchester and Leeds/Bradford.