Girona, Montpellier, Toulouse … Comment are airports overcoming the Covid crisis?
Now that the pandemic is receding and the aviation sector has recovered this summer, the airport platforms are active to revive their activity which has collapsed. Strategies implemented at the neighboring airports of Perpignan and Carcassonne?
Airports are the big forgotten support measures for the main sectors of the economy. They do not even appear in the 15 billion euros plan for aeronautics, announced last June, by the Minister of the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire. “We are in the blind spot “, then worried Thomas Juin, the president of the Union of French Airports (UAF) pointing to a response of 60%, on average, with, sometimes, much greater reductions for certain airports.
Toulouse: a new strategic plan
At Toulouse-Blagnac, which has been close to 10 million passengers for the past two years, Airbus airport, the sixth platform in France, leaders are working on a recovery plan. If during the second quarter, Toulouse-Blagnac airport (ATB) has “started its recovery “despite a significant decline in activity (national and international traffic) and freight to a lesser extent partly to the development of e-commerce. To support its rebound, ATB can count on a winter program of 51 national and international destinations provided by some twenty companies (66 destinations offered for the summer season 2021). Toulouse airport, which does not foresee a total recovery of the situation for three to four years, has also drawn up a new 2021-2025 strategic plan, called “Care” (conquer with daring to bounce back together). The axes: optimizing the offer and the operating model for greater flexibility and competitiveness, developing new sources of growth through the agreement signed with the Toulouse Métropole Attractiveness Agency or even real estate (Barry Controls and FedEx set up in the airport area), the reception of the Hyport hydrogen station …
Montpellier: reclaiming Paris and its business customers
Montpellier Méditerranée Airport sees the end of a crisis better supported than other airports, with a drop of 58%. The platform offers 29 destinations for the winter season, after the record of 36 summer destinations. It is targeting 1.7 million travelers in 2022, all destinations combined (compared to 2.3 million expected in 2020 before the Covid), including 500,000 travelers for the destination Paris. The low cost companies Easy Jet and Transavia (Air France-KLM) are launching an offer to Paris Orly. An offer that follows the end of the Paris-Orly shuttle by Hop from November. “This new low-cost offer offers up to 6 low-cost flights per day in addition to Air France flights from Montpellier to Paris-Roissy, bringing a global offer of 10 flights per day., explains Emmanuel Brehmer, chairman of the management board of Montpellier airport. Paris is a growth accelerator for the airport. If we fail, the impact will be difficult to recover in the short term“. The two companies ensure the complementarity of their offer to attract business and leisure / family customers thanks to attractive prices “from 35 to 40 €, it is two times cheaper than a TGV rate “, he adds, convinced that the rise of teleworking will have a limited impact.
Girona: Ryanair / Transavia spearheads the recovery
If Girona airport took advantage of the summer craze with passenger traffic up 117% last August. The platform shows an 86.3% decline in activity from January to September 2021 compared to the same period in 2019, according to Aena. 2.16 million passengers passed through the platform in 2019. However, will the Catalan airport be able to withstand the effects of the health crisis? Two companies – Ryanair and Transavia – share the mainly leisure destinations. It remains to be seen whether the platform will benefit from a report from customers from Perpignan or elsewhere?
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Solutions to relaunch activity at Carcassonne and Perpignan airports?