London's City Airport is expecting a slowdown in passenger growth this year as the global financial crisis takes its toll, but still expects a 12-15% jump to around 3.4m travellers.
"It's slower but it's not going backwards," the airport's Chief Executive Richard Gooding told Reuters in an interview, adding that 2007 growth was 23%.
"The froth has come off it... but you tell me when the current financial crisis is going to end and I'll tell you when passenger numbers will really start growing again," he said, noting City expected to treble in size to 9 to 10 million passengers a year in 25 years.
City airport - a favourite of the London investment banking community due to its proximity to financial centres in the City and docklands - is more sensitive to corporate habits as 70% of its passengers are business travellers.
Gooding said it was unclear whether the consumer spending downturn would also have an impact, as many holiday-makers would have bought their tickets well in advance.
"If we see a downturn in leisure travel it will be later in the year," he said.
City Airport hosts airlines flying to short haul routes in Europe such as Geneva, Copenhagen and Edinburgh, with Air France-KLM its biggest carrier.
But Gooding said a new British Airways business class-only route to New York planned for next year could shape the future of the airport, as it could pave the way for more 'medium haul' travel to locations such as Dubai and Moscow.
"It's a very interesting and innovating thing to do... it opens up a number of new horizons for us which otherwise would not have been there," Gooding said, adding that he thought BA would be more of a success than recent business-class only failures such as SilverJet because of the established brand name.
BAA BREAK-UP
City is one of the two London airports not part of the Spanish-owned BAA monopoly that controls Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, and Gooding said he supported calls for a break-up of the company.
The industry veteran, who has also run the other non-BAA London airport at Luton, said separate owners would do a better job for the passenger - a stance echoed by a Competition Commission report published earlier this year.
"We've never been in favour of a joint ownership. We think separate ownership of some or all of BAA would be in the consumer's interest and national interest. It could even delay the need for new runways," he said, adding that individual owners would make better use of existing assets.
"I could cynically say that Heathrow and BAA are our best salesmen, so it is in our interest to let them continue to underperform, but that is too cynical," he said, adding that it would be preferable for London as a whole to keep growing as an air hub so that City could keep growing within that.
City was bought for just under 750m pounds ($1.48bn) by a consortium including the insurer American International Group and Credit Suisse in 2006.
By John Bowker, Reuters
