2010 Charleroi Airport (CRL) latest news

[sn26567]

"New Record for Brussels South Charleroi Airport: 467,943 passengers in May, an increase of 39%!"

As already posted here: viewtopic.php?p=233649#p233649

[Acid-drop]

it's creating quite some jobs for a region that need it the most, well done

[Megaman]

Yes and a lot of jobs that require low qualifications (which is exactly what the region needs)... I just hope that the ecologists don't stand too much in the way of the development of the airport which has a lot of growth potential in the near and less near future (low cost longhaul, transfers, full service airlines...).

[Desert Rat]

The increase in pax, boost as well the qualified jobs, more pax = more A/C's = more rotations = more pilots = more engineers = etc....not only low qualification jobs.

A bit off topic but still in CRL, is there any spotters taking pictures of the Fairchild A10 Thunderbolt II being overhauled by SABCA Charleroi??

[Desert Rat]

http://www.sabca.be/pages/0141/News.115.en.php

These one...

[kleineboy]

New Bus service between Luxemburg City and Charleroi airport

http://www.flibco.com/

[sn26567]

New Bus service between Luxemburg City and Charleroi airport

http://www.flibco.com/

Already mentioned here yesterday: viewtopic.php?p=233650#p233650

[Desert Rat]

http://www.sabca.be/pages/0141/News.207.en.php

RNLAF F16's in CRL for paint job

[Charlie Roy]

New Ryanair routes starting November:

Gothenburg
Lappeenranta
Verona

[Megaman]

Again good news for Charleroi. They better get those shovels out and start extending the terminal. Saturation is just around the corner.

Is the airport in itself making a profit nowadays or is it still state aid dependant?

[Stij]

New Ryanair routes starting November:

Gothenburg
Lappeenranta
Verona

Finally 3 non-beach destinations!

I hope the schedule to Verona is OK, because that's a destination I need a lot!

Cheers,

Stij

[Acid-drop]

Again good news for Charleroi. They better get those shovels out and start extending the terminal. Saturation is just around the corner.

Is the airport in itself making a profit nowadays or is it still state aid dependant?

They knew saturation would come very fast.
The design is made so an extention is not too hard to build, but it still takes time...

Aid dependant, maybe not the right term.
Last articles said that BSCA would be the payer, but the amound of money is too important (around 140 M€).
I'm sure the walloon gov will be happy to invest a bit more in something that is working extremelly well and achieved all expectations in term of creation of jobs.

[Megaman]

Just wanted to know if the airport was profitable yet or not.
I understand that ythe airport is producing value for the region by creating jobs and airport gravitating services.
Are there any plans to build a hotel at the airport?

[Acid-drop]

the airport is profitable (mainly thanks to the parkings), history in the topic.
but it's not enough to invest such a big amount of money

[OO-JFP]

Eindhoven airport has got the approval to expand. As a consequence probably a steep decrease of dutch license plates on the parkings of Charleroi?

http://www.rnw.nl/nederlands/bulletin/e ... uitbreiden

Intention is to increase passenger number from 1.7M last year to 4 - 5M by adding 25.000 flights a year in the coming years. By expanding the time to operate from the airport (flexibility) the result should be to attract more flights by low cost carriers in order to withstand competition from Weeze and Charleroi.

OO-JFP

[Acid-drop]

Charleroi will probably grow slower now ...
but there is still one condition : the destinations need to be the same.

Now, the real looser, it's probably BRU ...

[SabenaForever]

Charleroi will probably grow slower now ...
but there is still one condition : the destinations need to be the same.

Now, the real looser, it's probably BRU ...

Well, Ryanair just announced 3 new destinations from CRl, Verona, Götenborg and Lappeenranta!

[NCB]

There is no saturation, only bad space management. At the busiest moments, only one third of all available parking stands are being used. They can double their traffic before thinking of wasting money to extend the terminal but Ryanair will never be able to achieve 8 million passengers out of Charleroi without the destinations to support them.

CRL is not financially profitable if you omit the regional contributions to the airport. CRL is socially profitable as it creates jobs in a socially challenged region, which is a partially good justification for the airport.
The impact is often overrated because the airport does not have the importance to cover 1% of Charleroi's gross product, due to the low-cost model that results in low wage-low staff-high workload system and the Ryanair crew are paying taxes to Ireland. Most cabin crews are Eastern Europeans who are on a hunger-wage and many pilots commute from Brussels and Vlaanderen. Technicians are supplied by Lufthansa Technik Brussels, who knows where they live.
If you look at the flip side of the coin, even more people living in Wallonia are dependent on BRU, most of them are paying taxes in Belgium, not in Ireland.
When CRL expands, BRU loses. Charleroi wins but Wallonia and Belgium lose.

Parkings are a main revenue stream to all airports, more significantly for CRL that lacks rentable shop space.

[pressman]

Nearly all of the pilots and cabin crew live in belgium , although they may pay their income taxes in Ireland there is plenty of money spent by them here thus making a substantial contribution to belgium in that way , btw most of the cabin crew will earn NET quite a bit more than the average belgian wage and certainly more than in the Belgian Airlines , they are far from recieving a "poverty wage" .

[NCB]

For the 11 aircraft based, the crew are all based in Belgium, which means that they sleep and feed themselves in Belgium. In the cabin crew arena, Ryanair is shifting policies and is now importing (yes, this is the right word) young crews from Eastern-European contractors (Workforce) who are only paid sectors and earn 900 euro per month nett, sharing cheap rooms at bases like CRL. They obviously can not afford to spend money in Belgium if they want to take money home and they do not get the much promised Ryanair contracts which offer basic pay.
Many pilots are not Belgians, they save their money and send it to the place they call home.

Ryanair also operates so many flights out of their other bases that do not bring one cent to the Belgian economy, except from the savings they bring to the customers which are easily cancelled out by what the region pays Ryanair and what was invested to create those jobs.

It's estimated that for every job created in the region, the creation of that job has costed between 100.000 and 200.000 euro, or 5 to 10 years worth of wages. Add what the region is continuing to pay to keep Ryanair coming and you realise that it will take alot longer to make good on those investments.

It's not all bad, but it's not all gold and diamonds.

I'm for CRL expanding using the existing facilities, towards 8 million passengers a year (with 6 million by Ryanair) and eventually adding some point to point longhaul flights, but Wallonia, please stop throwing with cash, start using your mind.
Ok railway station is acceptable but railway station and terminal extension is not acceptable. The actual facilities are well beyond capable of receiving up to 10 million passengers a year, it's only a matter of correct space management.
I know that CRL management has been selling this terminal extension and saturation story to serve their own agenda. Look at Liège, a beautiful terminal building and when you stand in the middle of it all you hear is the hollow sound of a vacuum cleaner cleaning the already clean airport floor.