Liverpool – Europe’s big, underserved opportunity
“We have service to several leisure orientated destinations in Europe. However, we still see significant levels of leakage to other UK airports,” comments Jonny Ford, Aviation Development Manager, Liverpool John Lennon Airport. “One example is Tenerife, where despite having two carriers serving the market, it is only capturing 15% of the primary catchment demand for the destination.” The picture is also similar for other Canary Island destinations, with Liverpool’s current services only taking hold of 37% (Fuerteventura), 33% (Lanzarote) and 20% (Las Palmas) of demand respectively. “It is a trend across all of the Mediterranean region from Liverpool,” adds Ford. Liverpool’s primary catchment on average sees leakage of 290,000 passengers a year to Greece, 250,000 to Italy, 215,000 to Turkey, 115,000 to Cyprus and 47,000 to Croatia. “This demonstrates the significant potential for new capacity in the UK’s 5th largest city.”
Time for hub connectivity
“Liverpool handled five million passengers in 2019, yet none flew on a service which offered connections,” comments Ford. “When you look at the European marketplace and strip back all airports and cities which have a serving airline offering onward connectivity via a hub connection, Liverpool is Europe’s largest airport without a hub offering.” This is a target of Liverpool Airport’s while in Milan. “While we are aware that there is close competition to our airport, in 2019 we had 62 destinations which were also served from our nearest competitor. That shows Liverpool is its own market and can support service which is also offered from other airports in the North UK market.”