Over £124m of investment has been earmarked for the airport
Exeter Airport’s forthcoming Master Plan will set a clear plan for growth and confirm Exeter as the airport of choice for the region and the principle gateway for Devon and Cornwall. The Department for Transport requires all UK airports to explain their future strategic framework in a Master Plan document and this sets out proposals for major infrastructure development.
The document, which will shortly be available for public consultation for a period of three months, assumes limited growth from Plymouth Airport in the forthcoming years and sets out a strategy which will see Exeter Airport develop its infrastructure to deal with the increasing demands for business and leisure flights both into and from the region.
Over £124m of investment has been earmarked for the airport in order to cement the airports long term future which see a growth in passenger usage from its current 1m passengers per year to an estimated 1.9m passengers by 2015 and 3.3m by 2030.
Jamie Christon, the Airport’s Deputy Managing Director said; “The forthcoming Master Plan will set out how we envisage the growth of the Airport and will deal with the development of the infrastructure.Our customers feedback demonstrates how important Exeter Airport is for the people of Devon and Cornwall as the hub for travel.We are currently offering over 50 worldwide destinations and playing our partas the gateway into the region for tourism.”
From May, Flybe introduce a new Brussels flight six-days-a-week together with a daily direct route to Aberdeen, a link to Inverness and a weekly flight to Dubrovnik. This year there are six regular flights to French destinations and another half dozen to Spanish airports in the Balearics and the Canaries. Other destinations are as wide ranging as Austria, Bulgaria and Cyprus through to Switzerland and Turkey. The weekly flights to Canada are in their twentieth year but more locally, the Isles of Scilly are proving to be as popular as ever with Skybus.
With the growing choice of flights from Exeter for overseas holidays, passengers are increasingly able to cut down on car miles and possible overnight hotel bills by using their local Airport rather than a departure point such as Gatwick.
