Newquay Airport abolishes airport development fee in bid to attract low cost airlines back to Cornwall

In September, the Cabinet decided in a confidential session to abolish the airport development fee (ADF) at Newquay Airport in order to attract low cost airlines to use the airport. The fee of £5 per departing passenger had been charged by the Council for several years in order to make a contribution towards the running costs of the airport and thus to reduce the subsidy given by the Council towards the operation of the airport. The fee has raised about £500,000 per annum, and the subsidy paid by the council taxpayer has been in the range of 3 to 4 million pounds per annum.

On 28 October, Cornwall Council publicly confirmed that the ADF would be abolished from April 2016. The following day, Ryanair announced that they would be flying on 2 routes to and from Frankfurt Hahn and Alicante during the summer months of 2016.

The details of the arrangement with Ryanair are still, at this stage, confidential and so I cannot publish on this website those details. Suffice it to say that the deal brings negligible financial benefit to Newquay Airport and that, with the foregoing of the half a million pounds of income from the ADF, the subsidy from the Council to the airport will be larger than it would have been if we had kept the ADF and Ryanair not come to the airport.

October 2015