Bristol Airport is planning to relaunch a direct flight to New York in the next three-to-five years, the transport hub’s top boss has confirmed.
In an exclusive interview with BusinessLive, chief executive David Lees said having a direct flight from the city to the 'Big Apple' was on his “target list”.
The airport ran a direct flight to New York’s Newark Liberty Airport between 2005 and November 2010. The route was operated by Continental Airlines.
There has been much speculation in the years since over whether a direct route would ever be revived.
Mr Lees said: “We have plans to launch new routes reflecting where people want to go, including New York.
“We did previously have a route and it is on my target list. It is one of the key locations people from our region fly to, so it’s not about stimulating new demand it’s about catering for existing demand.”
He added: “I would like to think it would be over the next three-to-five years.”
According to Mr Lees, the airport is also considering launching new routes to Dubai and Istanbul, in Turkey.
"We are not building a new runway, we are making the most of the existing one," he said.
“[These locations] are where people from our region are driving to the South East to get on a plane. We won’t be able to accommodate all of that but a proportion of that we would like to meet the needs of.”
Mr Lees was speaking to BusinessLive ahead of the UK giving Brits the green light to travel abroad on May 17. Britons are now allowed to fly to 12 countries on the ‘green list’, including Israel and Portugal.
Ask whether the cost of air travel would go up following the pandemic, Mr Lees said he was “not convinced”.
“There is a lot of speculation - there is some inflationary pressure - but I think the airlines are more keen than ever to keep prices competitive," he said.
“I don’t think it will get cheaper but I don’t think it will be a massive price escalation.”
He also said vaccine passports would be “important” for people who wanted to travel overseas:
“The EU already has a green digital passport. When I had my vaccination and I was given a little card, can that really be taken as credible evidence?
“We need to move towards something in a digital format which can be verified. It could be an app that would have your details on that you could show to someone in another country.
“It would bring greater levels of security than a hand-written, possibly easily forged, piece of paper.”
The announcement about future flight routes follows a tough 12 months for Bristol Airport, which has been forced to make 30% of its staff redundant in the last year. Before the Covid crisis, the airport directly employed 400 people.
It also had its expansion plans to increase capacity from 10 million passengers to 12 million a year, while adding thousands more parking spaces, rejected by North Somerset council in 2020. It has since l odged an appeal to try to overturn the decision.
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