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Bus services connecting Stansted Airport to Colchester, Braintree, and Bishop’s Stortford will be “further boosted” on July 3 2011, according to the Essex hub’s website. The affected routes are operated by transport company Tellings Golden Miller (TGM)

TGM plans to abandon the existing X22 service to Colchester and Braintree in favour of a new bus route, the 133. Presently, the X22 operates every two hours, 24hrs a day. The 133 will retain its predecessor’s round-the-clock schedule, but operates every 60 minutes instead. TGM’s Excel 308 service from Stansted to Bishop’s Stortford will be altered to operate on a 24hr schedule, including on Sundays. The service will otherwise remain unchanged.

Stansted Airport referred to the partnership between the hub and local bus companies as “a real success story”.

Bob Dorr, chief at TGM, hopes that the altered bus timetables will encourage people who traditionally drive to the airport to leave their cars at home. Mr. Dorr noted that TGM and Stansted had worked “very hard” to maintain efficient transport links in the Colchester area. “We are delighted to have such a progressive partner in Stansted Airport.”

Airport chiefs claim that investment in the local community, to the tune of 31p from the sale of every car parking space, was responsible for the improved bus services. The extent of that investment is perhaps best represented by the volume of passengers that travel to Stansted via public transport – 50%, allegedly, the highest ratio of airport bus users to car users in the UK.

TGM’s X22 service calls at Colchester Bus Station and Essex University, among other destinations. The Excel 308 visits Heath Row (not to be confused with Heathrow Airport), Thorley and Bishop’s Park, and the centre of Bishop’s Stortford. More information on public transport serving Stansted Airport can be found on the hub’s official website.

Over the centuries, artists have used all sorts of materials in their compositions, from charcoal and paint, to acrylics and oils. However, a recent drugs bust at Stansted Airport suggests that a few Columbian painters have taken impressionism to new extremes, by painting with Class A drugs.

“The smugglers had covered the canvases with a layer of cocaine, and then literally painted over the drugs”, explained Sarah Wolstenholme, assistant director of the Stansted branch of the UK Border Agency. Ms. Wolstenholme noted that “the smell” coming from the package had given away the ruse, indicating that the paintings were “more than they seemed”.

Officials say that the extremely crude paintings would have had a street value of £10,000 if they had ever reached their destination, in Southwest London. The five abstract pictures contained, amongst other ingredients, 200g of cocaine, a quantity referred to as “relatively small” by the UK Border Agency.

Stansted Airport has become a preferred point of entry for people smuggling strange goods into the UK. On May 8, a 54-year-old woman was found to be carrying 15 tortoises in a lettuce-filled box. The amphibians, known as ‘spur-thighed’ tortoises, are classified as ‘vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, but enjoy some popularity as (very expensive) garden pets. Their importation is, however, illegal without the correct paperwork.

Malcolm Bragg, assistant director of investigations at the UK Border Agency, said that the smuggling of animals was a “contributory factor” to the extinction of species, especially as many creatures do not survive their ordeal, or become seriously ill during transportation. The fifteen tortoises found at Stansted, for example, were found to be underweight and covered in tics.

Stansted’s captured paintings, marked as ‘shirts and paints’ in cargo dossiers, were discovered on a flight from South America in April this year. The smugglers had valued the shipment at $1, in a bid to evade the attentions of border officials.

Stansted, the third largest airport in the UK, is also the best low-cost hub in the world. The Essex airport was nominated top of its category at the 2011 World Airport Awards in Copenhagen, Denmark, shrugging off competition from Brussels Charleroi Airport in Belgium, and London Luton Airport in the UK.

The World Airport Awards, now in its twelfth year, measure customer satisfaction levels at more than 240 global hubs. The process is “totally free of any commercial influence or bias”, according to organiser, Skytrax, and awards are allocated based upon the opinions of 11.38m travellers. Nominees must excel in 39 aspects of airport business, from customer service, to the provision of a safe ‘experience’ for passengers.

Stansted, which is home to Ryanair, easyJet, and bmibaby, among others, featured in the rankings of last year’s World Airport Awards as well, achieving third place in the low-cost airport category, behind Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport in first position and, once again, Charleroi Airport in second.

Nick Barton, Stansted’s managing director, said that the airport was “extremely proud” to be home to a “new breed” of budget carriers, such as AirAsia X. “It’s thanks to the help and support of our excellent airline partners that we have gained this global honour and recognition”, Mr. Barton explained in an official press release.

In related news, Stansted Airport has also been handed an Air Cargo Award of Excellence. The accolade, which is voted for by airlines, rather than passengers, recognises efforts to improve the quality of freight services. Stansted’s run of good luck stands in stark contrast to the fortunes of local rivals, Heathrow and Gatwick, which have both been criticised in the media in recent weeks.

Stansted Airport’s main terminal has been standing for more than two decades, according to officials at the Essex-based hub.

Completed in 1991, and opened by the Queen just four days later, the hub’s main building is commonly referred to as the Lord Foster Terminal, after its 75-year-old designer, Norman Foster. Lord Foster is a famous British architect, known for his work on Wembley Stadium, the headquarters of HSBC in Hong Kong, and the Reichstag in Germany. Many of Lord Foster’s designs are modern structures, containing cubic shapes forged from glass and steel.

Stansted Airport, which handles around 18m travellers per year, is a fine example of Lord Foster’s design ethos. The terminal building is a gigantic glass cube, supported by ‘nests’ of metal posts. The airy structure, seated on 500,000sq ft of Essex countryside, stands level with the tops of the trees in Hatfield Forest, a design feature that required the destruction of a hillside in 1981. Unfortunately, whilst the hub’s rather violent intrusion into the green fields of southeastern England has left few obvious scars on the landscape, the local villages of Chickney and Stansted Mountfitchet remain plagued by noise and air pollution, and a rapidly souring housing market.

Nick Barton, director at Stansted, said that the airport’s 1,300 staff members were “extremely proud” that the Lord Foster-designed terminal is “still as good today as it was when Her Majesty the Queen opened it twenty years ago”. Surprisingly, many of the baggage handlers and security guards that celebrated the terminal’s twentieth year on earth were present for the Queen’s visit in the early nineties. Trevor Waldock, a former security guard at Stansted, recalled how equipment was moved from the old terminal into the Lord Foster building “overnight”, by carrying it across the runway. Mr. Waldock referred to the transfer as “symbolic”.

Speaking to the BBC News website, Spencer de Grey, head at Foster and Partners, said that the firm did not want to emulate the “expensive” and inefficient design of Heathrow and Gatwick airports, when first presented with the task of creating a new terminal at Stansted. “We literally turned upside down the traditional terminal”, Mr. de Grey said, in reference to Stansted’s twenty-year-old building.

Manchester Airports Group (MAG) has expressed a desire to buy one of the two airports being sold by the British Airports Authority (BAA). The BAA has been told that it must sell Stansted, and one of either Glasgow or Edinburgh airports, after the Competition Commission found that the firm’s monopoly on UK aviation was detrimental to competition in the industry. Charlie Cornish, chief executive at MAG, said that the operator would “definitely have a look” at any future sale, if the airports could “deliver value for shareholders”.

At present, MAG’s four airports in the UK handle a combined 22.8m passengers a year, according to Civil Aviation Authority figures for 2010, compared to 104m at the BAA’s six hubs. If the BAA was forced to sell Stansted and Glasgow (for example), the aviation firm’s hold on UK aviation would slip to 79m travellers per year. The purchase of Stansted by MAG would add 18.6m passengers to the operator’s annual figures, creating a hypothetical, end-of-year figure of 41.4m travellers. The market place would even out, but the BAA would retain the largest share of the aviation cake.

It is extremely unlikely that the BAA will ever be dethroned, as Heathrow Airport adds 66m travellers a year (and a host of freight movements) to the operator’s annual tally. Further strengthening the BAA’s position is the low chance that Stansted and one of the two Scottish Airports will be sold to the same company. If MAG was to buy Stansted and Glasgow, for example, the firm would control four ‘top twelve’ airports, compared to the BAA’s two, a figure that is likely to upset the Competition Commission.

MAG previously tried to purchase Gatwick from the BAA in 2009, but was unable to acquire sufficient funding. However, the company was instrumental, albeit unintentionally, in a minor BAA victory over the Competition Commission in 2009, which placed the sale of Stansted and one of the two Scottish airports on temporary hold. The BAA complained to the Competition Appeals Tribunal of “apparent bias” in the sale of Gatwick Airport to Global Infrastructure Partners, after it was discovered that Peter Moizer, a man with an interest in MAG, was on the panel that originally forced the BAA to sell up.

A date for the sale of Stansted, and Edinburgh or Glasgow airport, has not yet been set. The Competition Commission is currently considering the BAA’s claims that the aviation industry has changed sufficiently since the original sale order to warrant a review of the entire case. The plea is based around the current government’s refusal to consider any airport expansions in the southeast, a move that severely limits the BAA’s ability to expand its business.

MAG currently owns Humberside, Bournemouth, East Midlands, and its namesake, Manchester Airport. The BAA has six airports in its portfolio, namely, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Southampton, Stansted, and Heathrow.

Blue and yellow airline, Ryanair, will begin flying from Stansted Airport to Rhodes in the Aegean Sea from April 2011. The route is part of a Europe-wide expansion of services into the Greek market, which will see flights to Thessaloniki, Kos, or Rhodes added at 11 continental airports and 2 UK hubs.

Rhodes, together with Lesbos, Crete, and Corfu, is one of more than 6,000 Greek islands in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. The destination has a temperate climate, similar to mainland Greece, making it a haven for sun-seekers. Rhodes is perhaps best known for its archaeology, however. The island is the former home of the Colossus, a massive statue that guarded the seaward entrance to Rhodes’ Mandraki Harbour, and the present location of many ancient ruins, including the Acropolis of Rhodes.

As the island depends on tourism, Ryanair’s new routes from Bologna in Italy, Bremen in Germany, and Stansted Airport, among others, will no doubt be a boon for Rhodes’ economy, and for the Greek region overall. The airline claims that its routes to Greece, numbering 30, will inject €350m (£296m) into the local economy. Stephen McNamara, head of communications at Ryanair, said that the airline was “delighted to boost tourism” in southeast Europe, noting that the Irish carrier has also added routes to Lithuania in recent weeks.

The flight from Stansted to Rhodes will depart the Essex hub three times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Tickets, available since the beginning of February, begin at £37.99 for a one-way journey. Ryanair estimates that 700,000 people will travel on its Greek routes during 2011/12.

The Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), a UK-based pressure group, has a repository of articles on its website, detailing the deleterious effect of modern aviation on human health. The fumes produced from aircraft, the AEF notes, are responsible for an increased risk of “deadly” blood clots, an exponential increase in strokes in women, and the erosion of lung function in young children.

People living in central London are especially at risk, according to the Environmental Audit Committee. Greenwich, Lewisham, and Hammersmith have levels of nitrogen dioxide that contravene European Union regulations on air pollution, whilst the City of London itself has more poisonous gases than the planet Venus. Whether the statistics are exaggerated is debatable, but it would be difficult to argue that aviation on all scales has at least some effect on the environment.

Jet fuel, much like petrol and coal, is high up on the list of eco-unfriendly substances, producing an estimated 3.5% of measurable climate change. Fortunately, Stansted Airport, in an effort to curb runaway emissions, and improve the reputation of the aviation industry, is to begin trials of a “pioneering” fuel that could “drive down emissions and power airport vehicles of the future.” Together with energy firm, ITM Power, the Essex hub will use two purpose-built Ford Transit vans to test ‘HFuel’, a hydrogen-based alternative to conventional jet fuel.

Over the course of a week beginning March 7 2011, the two vehicles will be absorbed into Stansted’s regular fleet, and perform regular airport duties. The vans’ performance will then be analysed by ITM Power to discern the “potential and development” of the fuel, and its viability for larger vehicles, such as aeroplanes and trucks. ITM Power’s chief executive, Dr Graham Cooley, noted that airports were “perfect locations” for HFuel tests.

Stansted will be the first UK business to receive its HFuel vans, but ITM claims that a further 19 companies will soon be involved in the trial.

bmibaby, possibly the only carrier in the world to have a strange alien infant as a mascot, is to begin running flights from Stansted International to Belfast City Airport in Ireland.

The airline will operate the route three times a day during the week, and once on a Sunday. bmibaby claims that it will become the only carrier to travel between the two destinations when the route goes live on March 28 2011.

Perhaps even more exciting, for explorers of far-flung lands at least, is the news that Albanian airline Belle Air has introduced a twice-weekly flight from Stansted to Tirana, the capital of Albania. The service, announced by “forward thinking” newspaper Cambridge First, is one of just two direct flights to Tirana available from the UK.

Speaking about the new Belfast City route, bmibaby's director, Julian Carr, said that the flight was “ideal” for any customer, business or leisure, who wishes to travel between Ireland and London. bmibaby's parent company, premium airline bmi, noted that the new Belfast-Stansted route would “complement” an existing flight from the Irish city to Heathrow Airport.

Belfast City is rapidly becoming the airport of choice for major airlines in Ireland. Manx2, an airline based at Ballasalla on the Isle of Man, and bmibaby have both jumped ship in recent months, moving their planes from Belfast International to Belfast City, a development that has angered Exeter-based carrier Flybe. The white-and-blue airline was previously the dominant airline at City.

Tickets for Belfast-Stansted cost from £23.99, one-way, whereas Belle Air’s route to Albania comes in at around €280 (£233) for a return ticket in economy class departing on 1 April 2011 and returning on the following Monday. Eager visitors can book flights to and from the Albanian city on the Belle Air website.

On November 24, industrial action by millions of Portuguese workers resulted in the cancellation of more than 60 Ryanair flights from a number of UK airports, including Stansted, Glasgow, and Liverpool. The strike, dubbed the biggest in the country’s history by Portugal News, was in protest at government plans to cut wages, as fears of an Ireland-style financial collapse spread throughout southwestern Europe.

Portugal, much like Spain and France, is one of the most popular holiday destinations for UK travellers. The country has warm temperatures, and a history of conquest and exploration that rivals that of neighbouring country, Spain, whose conquistadors put the Incan Empire to the sword over 450 years ago.

Ryanair and Irish rival, Aer Lingus, pulled the plug on flights to Lisbon, Porto, and Faro as Portuguese air traffic controllers joined last week’s strike. Newspapers report that train stations, ferry terminals, airports, and most other forms of public transport were derailed completely or manned by skeleton crews for the duration of the walkout.

The strike, which lasted 24 hours, is rumoured to have cost the country upwards of €500m (£420m), a debt that is likely to guarantee a Portuguese bid for huge loans from the EU, similar to the requests handed in by Greece and Ireland this year.

Ryanair was unimpressed, saying “we have cancelled more than 2,000 flights and delayed more than 12,000 (in 2010), causing disruption to more than 2.5 million passengers.” The airline referred to similar industrial action in Spain, Belgium, and France, and cited wide scale disruption to global air traffic as a reason to revoke air traffic controllers’ right to strike.

However, Portugal News suggests that Ryanair has taken out its frustration on its passengers rather than foreign unions, offering “no help whatsoever” to UK passengers stranded in Porto and Lisbon airports. Travellers have even had to pay for replacement flights, in an event that mirrors this year’s Volcanic Ash Crisis for levels of chaos and uncertainty.

Essex homeowners who sold their houses to the British Airports Authority (BAA) at the end of last year want the opportunity to buy them back.

The properties were sold to the aviation giant under the assumption that they would be demolished if plans to expand Stansted Airport ever came to fruition. However, as the expansion of all London airports was scrapped as part of the Conservatives’ election manifesto, the BAA-owned homes no longer face being destroyed to make way for an extra terminal or runway. This means, say ex-residents, that the homes should be returned to the property market and sold.

BAA officials began moonlighting as estate agents in October 2009, and bought more than 300 homes near Stansted and Heathrow airports, paying up to three times the market price in some instances. Since the bottom fell out of the campaign in July, shortly after David Cameron was elected as Prime Minister, the BAA’s houses have been rented to short-term tenants or, even worse, left empty.

Ex-resident, Maggie Sutton, is unhappy that her family was forced to leave a home that they "loved." She has pleaded with the BAA, albeit through a BBC TV programme, to “rebuild the community.” “It is heartbreaking to live the way we’ve lived for the last eight years," Maggie explained.

BAA bosses are “reviewing how to dispose of the properties,” according to the BBC News website, but the aviation firm claims that it has not yet been approached by anybody wanting to re-purchase their home in the Stansted area.

Peter Sanders, chairman of the Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) pressure group, said that the local community has been “destroyed.” SSE is petitioning the government to place a 50-year block on expansions at Stansted Airport, regardless of who owns the Essex hub, or which political party happens to be in power at the time.

From February 18 2011, specialist holiday firm, Snowjet, will increase the frequency of flights between Stansted Airport and Sion, a small city in southwestern Switzerland, to three trips per week.

The alteration will also see an existing Sunday afternoon flight shunted to a later time, making “skiing weekends a very real option.”

Snowjet will operate the route on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays until April 8 2011, using aircraft from Titan Airways, famed for its provision of planes to The Rolling Stones and former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

The news comes at a time when airlines all over Europe are bolstering their winter campaigns with additional routes to popular ski resorts. Carriers at Liverpool and Luton airports, for example, recently added routes to Grenoble in France, and Turin in Italy, respectively.

Snowjet is marketing its revised routes at busy individuals or families who may not have the time for a lengthy getaway, according to the firm’s Managing Director, David Lacy. Weekend ski breaks are also “perfect for the enthusiast keen to grab every opportunity to get to the slopes."

Despite being relatively unknown outside its native Alps, Sion is lauded as the archetype of the Swiss skiing gateway, providing immediate access to the resorts of Saas Fee and Veysonnaz, among others.

The city airport, located just two miles from Sion, is also renowned for its non-existent queues, having just the one airline, the aforementioned Titan Airways, operating from its Rhone Valley airfield.

Fares on the Sion route cost in the region of £79, one way. Snowjet is also offering routes from three UK airports to Chambery in France this winter, namely, Bristol, Stansted, and London’s second airport, Gatwick.

The British Airports Authority’s (BAA) monopoly over UK aviation faces further deconstruction after a High Court judge ruled that there was no “apparent bias” in the sale of Gatwick Airport to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) in 2009.

At the beginning of last year, BAA owned seven British airports; Southampton, Stansted, Heathrow and Gatwick in England; and Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, the three largest hubs in Scotland.

By November 2009, BAA had been forced to sell Gatwick to GIP, and was under pressure from the Competition Commission to offload Stansted and either Glasgow or Edinburgh to the highest bidder.

However, the aviation giant refused to roll over, claiming that one of the bidders on its prized London asset, Gatwick, was involved with Manchester Airports Group, one of BAA’s main competitors, hence the claim of apparent bias.

BAA’s complaint was upheld in December 2009, granting the firm a ‘stay of execution’ on the sale of its airports.

Fast-forward 10 months, and BAA is again facing the collapse of its empire, after Lord Justice Maurice Kay favoured the Competition Commission in the High Court, ruling that the possibility of apparent bias in the sale of Gatwick was so low as to be insignificant.

Battered but resolute, BAA immediately announced its intentions to take the case to the Supreme Court.

However, not everybody was unhappy to see BAA defeated - Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary criticised the aviation firm’s management style, stating that Stansted could not have a “worse owner".

O’Leary also called for the speedy sale of the Essex airport, which currently hosts 106 Ryanair routes.

The future sale of two of BAA’s largest airports - Stansted and either Edinburgh or Glasgow - would help rival firms compete in a marketplace that has historically been dominated by just one company.

Competition is likely to come from Peel Airports Ltd., owner of Doncaster, Durham and Liverpool airports, and Manchester Airports Group (MAG), which claims its namesake, Bournemouth, East Midlands and Humberside airports as assets.

MAG has also expressed an interest in buying one of the two Scottish airports currently owned by BAA.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has revealed a desire to rebrand the often controversial airline into a sophisticated business, discarding the ‘cheap and cheerful’ image that has made the carrier so popular, and opting for a business model that favours growth over publicity-generating hi-jinx.

The move would almost inevitably result in the loss of a number of budget seats across Ryanair’s UK bases, with Stansted and Dublin withstanding the worst of the cull. The two airports have 185 Ryanair routes between them (106 at London Stansted and 79 at Dublin).

O’Leary told the Observer newspaper that cheap air tickets “could not last” and that Ryanair would need to “rebrand like Tesco and Lidl” if the airline was going to secure its survival into the future.

He claims that Ryanair, which has been gaining 5-10 million passengers per year, would soon start to see diminishing returns on its advertising campaigns and publicity stunts, equating to a far slower growth rate of 3-4% per year. In comparison, Ryanair is currently enjoying a growth rate (passengers/year) of around 5-10%.

Perhaps the most radical element of Ryanair’s future facelift is not the loss of £1-a-seat sales, but O’Leary’s pledge to behave.

O'Leary, who is frequently photographed with a model plane between his legs, began September by describing global warming as “horsesh*t,” and the United Nations as “one of the most useless organisations” in the world.

So frequent are O’Leary’s expletive-filled rants that his ‘best bits’ have been collected into a book entitled, 'Plane Speaking: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael O'Leary'.

Whilst the title may be ironic, it would be difficult to deny that Michael’s ‘wisdom’ is responsible for Ryanair’s burgeoning success.

The airline wants to concentrate on creating a different management structure that provides more money for shareholders. However, the first casualty of the overhaul is expected to be O’Leary himself, who said that he would quit when Ryanair becomes twice its present size, at around 400 aircraft.

"We won't need my dog and pony show then,” O’Leary explained. "Every company has to move away from being the high-growth Robin Hood."

As Ryanair’s efforts to rebrand will come at the cost of its most characteristic features (its outspoken owner and quick-fire sales), the carrier’s new PR machine will need to be something very special indeed.

Musicians who play large instruments such as cellos and double basses have become accustomed to treading the minefield of airline regulations to see what they are required to do in order to fly with their instrument. However, more compact instruments have not previously been a problem for their owners.

Recently, though, it seems that Ryanair, never far out of the headlines with outlandish attempts to squeeze yet more money out of the travelling public, has fallen foul of the musical world with its draconian rules regarding instruments.

There have been various stories reported in recent months but the latest concerns a twelve-year-old student at the world famous Chethams School of Music in Manchester, who was denied boarding with her violin as hand baggage, despite the fact that her father had checked with the airline’s customer department before booking the flights and had also been given the OK by check-in staff.

Having reached the gate at the German airport of Weeze, they were told that the violin either had to go in the hold or a seat purchased for the instrument at a cost of £190, more than twice the price of both their tickets, which had cost £79 each. In the end, the pair flew easyJet to Sheffield at a cost of £250 and they are now seeking a refund from Ryanair.

Earlier this year, a trio of violinists were forced to pay an extra £1340 for seats for their violins as they were unwilling to put their 18th century instruments in the hold, hardly surprising given that the value of each instrument is around £8,000.

The Incorporated Society of Musicians has warned members to be extremely wary of the small print surrounding carriage of instruments.

Irish airline, Ryanair, has slashed the prices of five routes out of Stansted Airport, in anticipation of the winter sports season.

The cut-price destinations, which include some of the most popular ski resorts in Europe, now cost between £25 and £39, one-way, “much less than any other airline,” according to Ryanair’s communications manager, Daniel de Carvalho.

Salzburg in Austria, the cities of Turin and Cuneo in northwest Italy, and Grenoble and Lourdes in France, are included in Ryanair’s winter sale, whilst four additional routes to Bologna and Milan in Italy, and Faro and Porto in Portugal, will become available at the end of October 2010.

Baroque haven, Salzburg, is perhaps the archetypical winter sports destination, located within a few miles of the Northern Alps. The ski resorts of Bad Gastein, Hintersee, and Zell am See are an hour’s drive from the city or the airport, and enjoy snowy weather throughout much of the winter season.

Turin, a popular destination with museum buffs, sits to the south of the Alps, near the French-Italian border. The city has fewer local ski areas, but the nearby resorts of Sauze d’Oulx and Sestrière are the joint-largest in Italy, offering a combined 800km of pistes. Aosta Valley, also nearby, is well known amongst expert skiers.

Cuneo, another Italian city, is due south of Turin, and shares access to many of the same resorts with its larger neighbour.

Grenoble, France, provides almost immediate access to the hugely popular, Chamonix ski resort, whilst Lourdes stands as a gateway to the Pyrenees Mountains, close to the French border with Spain.

“Even those feeling the financial pinch this year can get away for a great week on the piste,” explained Daniel de Carvalho. “We guarantee the lowest fares and no fuel surcharge to Europe’s best ski resorts.”

The newly-reduced routes are expected to operate into mid-2011, comprising around 33 flights per week.

Holidaymakers in Essex can sample the pistes of Eastern Europe this winter, after budget airline, Ryanair, announced a new route from Stansted to the city of Plovdiv in Bulgaria.

The route, which begins on November 2 2010, will operate on Tuesdays and Saturdays for the duration of the winter season.

Despite Plovdiv’s position as the second largest city in Bulgaria, the airport is only served by a handful of airlines, offering routes to local favourites such as Yemelyanovo, Vnukovo, and Domodedovo airports in Russia, and the comparatively exotic, Dublin.

A new route to Belfast, due to begin in December, and Ryanair’s Stansted route make up the entirety of Plovdiv’s flights to Western Europe – unusual, given the city’s location within Bulgaria: Plovdiv is 54 miles from the ski resort of Pamporovo, and two hours from the slopes at Bansko.

Ryanair’s Laura McCormack explained the lure of Plovdiv – “the city has a rich and varied history dating back 8000 years." Laura claims that the airline is 'delighted' with its first ever route to the Bulgarian city.

The carrier will also boost the frequency of flights from Rome Ciampino Airport to London Stansted. The change, which comes into effect in November 2010, coincides with a new route from Gatwick to the Italian capital.

Known locally as the ‘City of the Seven Hills,’ Plovdiv has an impressive array of Roman architecture, including an aqueduct, an amphitheatre and odeon, and a stadium that would have held 30,000 people. The city is also the birthplace of World Footballer of the Year, Hristo Stoichkov.

Tickets for Plovdiv went on sale on August 5 at £32.99 for a single journey, taxes included.

Ryanair boss, Michael O'Leary, claims that an £11 duty on passengers flying out of the UK is an ‘insanely stupid’ measure that amounts to ‘tourism suicide.’ The levy, known as the Air Passenger Duty (APD), is enforced in the UK, but not in parts of Europe, leading airline bosses to consider moves to the continent.

O'Leary plans to reduce Ryanair’s base at Stansted Airport, resulting in the loss of seven routes, and the diversion of two planes to foreign airports. Unfortunately, the cull could have resounding consequences for the local economy, as up to 2,500 jobs could be lost from every airport department, from retail to security.

The Irishman claims that a rise in passenger duty in Ireland had earned the government €80m (£66m) in taxes, but cost the aviation industry €300m (£248m). The executive noted that a gesture in the opposite direction, i.e. the reduction of APD, prompts a huge rise in the number of people choosing to travel by plane.

APD has fallen significantly in Spain and the Canary Islands, helping Ryanair’s Spanish arm grow by 6% over the past year. O’Leary claims that moving aircraft to France, Spain, or Italy could save the airline £8m a year in taxes.

Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, has also announced plans to move the airline’s operations to Madrid-Barajas Airport in Spain, in protest at the government’s decision to scrap all runway expansions at Heathrow. The news could prove dire for the UK economy, especially if more airlines choose to follow Willie’s example.

In similar news, Phillip Hammond, the new transport secretary, was singled out for attack by O'Leary, after the MP announced an end to domestic flying within the next few years.

‘This is the sort of badly thought out nonsense we had from the last transport secretary,’ O’Leary said. ‘Try explaining that to the people of Belfast. Is he planning to build a tunnel under the Irish Sea?’ The coalition government is currently pursuing a revamp of British railways, reducing the need for short-haul flights.

An ‘airport task force’ might sound like a group of heroes in a substandard children’s TV program, but that is exactly what the government has christened a new scheme aimed at improving customer experience at Britain’s airports. The task force will help the UK produce ‘better not bigger’ airports, reducing the need for terminal expansions.

British Airways (BA) and BAA have both had their plans scuppered by the new Prime Minister, David Cameron. BA had hoped to expand at Heathrow until the airport’s third runway was axed, whilst BAA has been forbidden from building anything new at Stansted Airport.

Willie Walsh, the owner of BA, is now planning to move to Spain, taking his airline and the majority of its business operations with him. The move bodes ill for the economy, but Mr Cameron is unlikely to be swayed from his environmental campaigns, which means that the UK’s airports are being forced to find other ways to make their terminals more attractive to customers and investors.

The task force will initially focus on airports in the southeast, addressing concerns that airport shops are encroaching on waiting areas, leading to overcrowding. Representatives from Ryanair, EasyJet and Virgin will help develop the scheme, but authorities in the southeast want the government to allow local councillors onto the panel.

Last week, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond explained his ‘clear vision’ for Britain’s airports, stating that the task force will "create better services for passengers", and that it is "absolutely crucial that we get this right as aviation is vital to our national economy". Mr Hammond hopes to reduce queues and make aeroplanes more punctual.

The coalition government will not permit any further runway expansions at the London airports. The news was naturally welcomed by eco-warriors, but UK airlines and BAA have expressed concern about the move.

Prior to the election, it was easy to believe that David Cameron was just trying to win votes by plotting against a third runway at Heathrow, especially as the ex-Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was such a vocal proponent of the plan. Now that Mr Cameron is firmly entrenched in Downing Street, however, it is clear that the new PM is as good as his word.

Heathrow’s third runway has been axed indefinitely, and can now only be built if the Tory government gets the boot during the next election. Expansions at Gatwick and Stansted airports have also been stopped, regardless of whether the two airports had any designs on a new runway.

It seems like an odd decision, especially for a party that waxed lyrical about the state of the economy in its manifesto. The British Chambers of Commerce noted that Mr Cameron’s decision would reduce London’s appeal as an investment zone and deprive the economy of more than £22bn a year – hardly a good way to clear the UK’s budget deficit.

Of course, a lack of investment in UK airports will necessitate an overhaul of the country’s railway network, which could prove to be just as lucrative in the end. The Tories plan to build a new high-speed rail service from London to Edinburgh, and an airport-to-airport link between Heathrow and Birmingham.

Birmingham Airport has long petitioned to become a ‘second Heathrow;’ or at least a pressure valve for the London airport, helping reduce the need for a third runway or a sixth terminal at the site.

Whether the PM will permit expansion at other airports is unknown, but it will be interesting to see how the likes of Manchester and Bristol fare against Tory scrutiny. Manchester’s expansion plans have been branded ‘shocking,’ whilst Bristol Airport appears to be expanding against the wishes of the public.

Britons stranded abroad have been granted a reprieve from some of their worries, after the British Airports Authority (BAA) promised to waive all overstay fees for passengers parked at its six airports. The guarantee applies to customers who have had their travel plans disrupted by the Eyjafjoll volcano, if they can provide their original receipts.

The Association of British Travel Agents hopes to have all stranded passengers home by the end of this week, meaning that many people will have spent two weeks away from their homes, jobs, or even their families. It might sound delightful, having an extra few days off work, but the financial cost of an extended holiday is likely to be enormous.

Passengers who parked their car at Heathrow, Stansted, Southampton, Glasgow, Edinburgh, or Aberdeen airports will not be charged a penny beyond their original fee. The offer applies to long- and short-stay customers, and those holding SuperSaver passes, which are usually exempt from compassionate gestures.

Gatwick and Luton airports have also pledged to be lenient with regard to parking fees, but Liverpool intends to keep its overstay charge, albeit at a much-reduced price of £7, down from £27. Robin Tudor, a spokesperson for the airport, pointed to the costs of running the car park as an incentive to keep prices high.

“We still have to pay for things like heating, lighting and staff in the car parks, and we cannot do that for nothing.” Merseyside passengers who have been stranded since flight restrictions began on the 15th April could face a penalty fee of up to £100, depending on the day that they return to the northwest.

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Aviation giant, the British Airports Authority (BAA), has released its passenger statistics for March 2010, highlighting more ‘challenging conditions’ for the industry.

The figures, which became the first to quantify the effects of the British Airways (BA) cabin crew strike, consider the BAA’s six UK airports – Stansted, Southampton, Heathrow, and those in Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen).

When compared to the same period last year, Stansted airport managed to lose 4.2% of its March flyers, despite being one of only two BAA-owned airports to avoid the recent British Airways strike.

Edinburgh and Aberdeen airports lost 3.3% and 4.4% of their passengers, respectively, whilst Glasgow continued to implode, losing almost 10% of its regular visitors. The BAA blamed the British Airways strike for the loss of around 200,000 of its customers.

On the plus side, Southampton airport successfully avoided BA’s picket lines, and enjoyed a 5.3% boost in customers as a result. Heathrow also achieved growth of 0.4%, a figure that would have been closer to 3.8% if BA and Unite had settled their differences in February.

The figures did not come as a surprise to many people. Glasgow and Stansted are slowly becoming a liability on the BAA’s books, as the pair struggles to compete with their larger and more successful neighbours, namely, Edinburgh and Heathrow.

Stansted was stealing up to 5% of Heathrow’s business passengers as recently as November 2009, but the new figures suggest that the Essex site is now losing customers itself.

BAA chief, Colin Matthews, had an ominous message for the press – ‘There is no doubt that the market remains difficult.’

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Hundreds of football fans have asked Ryanair to provide an extra flight from Stansted to Barcelona on the 6th April, or so the airline claims. The airline has promised Arsenal supporters a one-time ‘Champions League’ route to Girona Airport on the morning of the Gunner’s quarter-final match against Barcelona.

Ryanair expects enormous demand for the 189-seat aircraft, which will depart Stansted on the morning of the sixth, and return at midday on the seventh. Girona Airport is, rather unsurprisingly, located in the city of Girona in the Costa Brava region of Spain, some 63 miles from Barcelona’s Camp Nou Stadium.

Despite its grandiose name, the Champions League route is not a tour package, and only includes a simple plane ride from Stansted to Barcelona. Ryanair has nonetheless given supporters an alternative to flying with beleaguered airline British Airways, which is expected to suffer another strike on the preceding weekend.

Stephen McNamara noted that Ryanair’s reservation centre had been "swamped with calls from Arsenal fans" over the weekend leading up to Monday’s announcement. However, the carrier has not mentioned if Champions League flights will become a regular occurrence.

Ryanair recently published its customer-service statistics for February 2010, complete with a wonderful jibe at rival airline EasyJet. It stated that "we publish our customer service statistics each month, unlike EasyJet which refuses to publish theirs". Ryanair recorded a 4% increase in flight punctuality over the same period last year, but complaints per 1,000 passengers increased from 0.86 to 1.39.

Stansted has teamed up with Ryanair to offer the first ever route from London to Ciudad Real, a city in the Castile-La Mancha region of central Spain. The route will open on the 24th May, in time for the summer holiday season, and will operate three times a week.

Ryanair has come to favour unusual, or hitherto unknown, destinations in recent months, starting with routes to Bydgoszcz and Szczecin in Poland, Tampere in Finland, Kaunas in Lithuania and now the little-known Ciudad Real in central Spain. The carrier has all its bases covered, anticipating a hectic summer season.

Last year, the infamous ‘staycation’ cost the aviation industry millions of pounds after 60% of Britons shunned the Alps and the Mediterranean for a quick roll in the Skegness sludge. Since then, budget airlines have been announcing new routes on an almost weekly basis in a bid to lure travellers away from their sofas and onto an aeroplane.

Ryanair’s new route is the sixteenth on Ciudad Real’s books, joining flights to Germany, Italy, France and Denmark. The carrier, which recently celebrated its four-millionth passenger, claimed unreserved delight at the development, before extending its everlasting sale into April and May.

Tickets to Ciudad Real have been available on Ryanair’s website since 13th March, starting at £19.99 each way. The city has some interesting landmarks, including a museum dedicated to Don Quixote, a landmark novel in Spanish literature.

Ryanair's latest routes are available in list form at the airline's official website.

The falling value of the pound against the euro has fostered a pronounced boom in the value of goods being purchased by travellers, the British Airports Authority (BAA) claims. Tourists waiting for their flights inside Stansted and Heathrow airports are spending an average of 5% more than they were last year.

At first glance, these single-digit percentages don’t seem very impressive, but in 2009 the BAA earned a massive £352m from retail sales alone. Stansted Airport experienced a 2% rise in friendly shoppers, equating to £7m in profit, whereas Heathrow earned £27m (7%) more from its cafés and bookstores.

In other words, the average passenger is spending £4 per trip at Stansted, and £4.93 at Heathrow.

BAA chief, Colin Matthews, cited fewer aircraft movements as instrumental in ‘relaxing’ travellers, and that ‘passengers who are confident and relaxed are more inclined to spend money than those who are stressed or delayed.’ Mr Matthews also noted that airport design and the attitude of staff members play key roles in improving retail sales.

Continental passengers are taking advantage of the strong euro, and buying more alcohol and cigarettes at Stansted in particular. Experts have warned that the euro could face some uncertainty in the future, however, as some Mediterranean countries battle against eleven-figure debts.

Despite the retail boom, overall the BAA went on to make a heavy loss last year, as the cold December weather forced a 1.9% fall in passenger numbers. The aviation firm posted a £822m pre-tax loss at the end of February 2010.

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BAA has posted a pre-tax loss of £822m, an impressive 154% rise over 2008 figures.

Bosses have blamed a combination of factors for the plunge, including a reduction in passenger numbers at its UK airports, and a £218 million hole in the firm’s pension scheme.

In December, and due in part to the frosty weather, BAA recorded a 1.9% slump in travellers using its airports.

London Heathrow, the firm’s biggest asset, was the only BAA-owned site to see an increase in passenger numbers – a meagre 1.2%. Aberdeen and Glasgow lost 9.4% and 8.8% of their 2008 passengers respectively.

Over the whole year, the figures were equally concerning, with Stansted and Glasgow posting losses in double figures.

The sale of Gatwick at the end of 2009 did little to stem the flow of cash out of BAA’s collective pockets.

Overheads and delivery costs tore £277 million from the £1.5 billion price tag, leaving the firm with just over £1 billion to play with, a figure that has since been earmarked for developments at its UK airports.

BAA executive Colin Matthews was optimistic about the future, claiming that the financial performance "remains resilient, especially at Heathrow", and confirming that they "remain focused on improving our efficiency and the service we offer customers”.

Mr Matthews noted that improved passenger spending had been a boon to the company bank account.

Not all is as rosy as it seems, however. BAA’s lawyers are currently embroiled in a battle to save Stansted from the saleroom, after the Competition Commission ruled to dismantle the firm’s monopoly over British aviation.

Stansted Airport bosses have just unveiled a plan to increase the airport’s contingent of female security guards by 50 positions. Staff fear a hectic summer schedule unless more women can be coaxed to the terminals.

Of the 800 people working beneath Stansted’s glass roof, around 50% of them are already female. So why is the airport so desperate to hire more women?

Under modesty laws, male officers cannot search (or ‘frisk’) female passengers. This poses a problem for under-staffed terminals, and delays can ensue as male security officers contend with a backlog of female passengers.

The issue is not with the number of women employed by Stansted, but rather with their working patterns as an increasing proportion of female guards choose to work part time. The new jobs, which have been advertised on the airport’s website, are also part-time positions.

Bosses are keen to attract ordinary people, rather than muscle-bound brutes. Recruitment boss Cathy Brennan is concerned that some women may associate security positions with violence and ignore the advertisement.

She said “traditionally, women don’t seem to be attracted to security officer roles", and that the bosses were looking for people "who have customer service experience and enjoy meeting and dealing with people". Existing officers have lauded the benefits of the position, which include shopping discounts.

Applicants must have a minimum of five years' work experience in a customer service position, such as a restaurant or shop, and have full-colour 20:20 vision. Interested parties should visit the BAA website, and enter the vacancy number STN381.

Thomas Cook Airlines have just released a new service whereby travellers can now use an online check-in service rather than checking-in at the airport before their flight. It claims to be the first charter airline in the country to launch the online check-in service from Stansted Airport.

As well as offering the service at Stansted Airport, Thomas Cook Airlines will also provide the option of checking-in online at Gatwick, Bristol, Newport and a few other airports across the country. It is planning on spreading the service to even more airports over the coming months.

The service will allow passengers to check-in online up to seven days before they are due to fly. Following this, they will then be able to go directly to the bag drop location and skip the check-in at the airport altogether. This will lead to shorter queues and less time waiting around at the airport. However, travellers will also be able to choose to check-in normally if they prefer.

If passengers want to choose their seats when they check-in online they will have to pay a fee. Priority Seat Selection is available up to 98 days before the date of travel, and prices start at £6 per passenger. The Seats Together and Your Seat Your Choice options both start from £12 per person for a return flight. Seats with extra legroom are also available from £23.50.

Joanna Wild, the customer services director at Thomas Cook Airlines, said that the aim was to provide their travellers with “more control over their booking”, and that the new service provided them with greater freedom over where they sat as well as making the airport experience “quick and easy”.

In December, over 150,000 travellers chose to stay at home, rather than run the gauntlet of delays, cancellations, and bad weather at UK airports. The news has aviation bosses braced for another taxing year, even as the global recession begins to abate.

This time last week the whole of the UK was covered in snow but the wintry weather has reasserted its grip on the south of England, which will have a negative effect on airports.

Much of Britain is thawing, albeit slowly, and most airports are back to running at full capacity. There are exceptions, of course – Birmingham and Gatwick were both closed this morning, forcing passengers to endure lengthy delays, but otherwise, the skies and runways are now clear of snow.

The BAA’s traffic figures for December paint a rather worrying picture of British aviation, however, and January’s numbers are set to be even worse, as cancellations start to catch up with airlines.

Adverse weather conditions at the end of last year resulted in a 0.9% fall in festive travellers over the figures for December 2008, and Stansted Airport nosedived by 2.6% in just one month, ironically, its best monthly performance for almost two years.

EasyJet and Ryanair proved to be persistent thorns in the BAA’s side last year, reducing the number of flights available to Stansted customers, and delaying their winter schedules until the very last minute.

As Stansted’s revenue hinges upon holidaymakers, as opposed to rich executives, like Heathrow, the lack of budget flights helped exacerbate the downward trend in passenger numbers.

BAA boss, Colin Matthews, was cautious about the coming year – “2009 was a difficult year for our airline customers. Towards the end of the year, we saw signs of improvements, particularly at Heathrow, but there are more challenging times ahead in 2010.”

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EasyJet has urged Britons to dispense with the winter blues, and start planning a summer holiday.

Despite a spree of cancellations, some as recent as Friday morning, EasyJet continues to put a pleasant spin on the frosty conditions by announcing twenty-one new routes at its European hubs.

Bristol gets three. Liverpool Airport is going to Bodrum, Turkey for its holidays, whilst Stansted gets four new flights out of London, commencing May 2010. EasyJet now boasts 29 routes from Stansted, served by 13 aeroplanes.

Airport boss, David Johnston, hailed the excellent news – “This announcement is a real positive beginning to 2010, and offers our passengers even more choice to increasingly popular destinations.”

The additions are part of the carrier’s sun and sea campaign, which attracts thousands of customers every summer. EasyJet has expanded its Stansted roster three times in the past ten weeks, much to the delight of airport brass.

EasyJet’s new routes travel to Dubrovnik and Split in Croatia, and Dalaman and Bodrum in Turkey. The cost of living is known to be much cheaper in these historic towns, being that Turkey and Croatia are outside the European Union.

On Friday, EasyJet cancelled 30 flights out of London, Belfast and Liverpool as the ubiquitous snow turned into thick ice overnight. The airline then attacked Gatwick Airport for operating far below normal capacity, and forcing delays on customers.

With temperatures falling to as low as -22 in some areas of the UK, passengers and airport personnel are braced for another difficult weekend.

If you are an EasyJet customer who has been affected by the recent delays and cancellations, please visit the airline’s website, where you may be able to claim a refund or arrange a free transfer to another airport.

Global handling firm, Swissport, is to axe up to ninety jobs at London Stansted, as part of a plan to cull 300 positions throughout the UK. The cuts are likely to be made in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

The Swiss company, whose slogan contains the words, “from landing to takeoff, we care!” has already given thirty-nine people the sack. A further fifty-one employees are at risk of unemployment.

In late October, Swissport failed to reach an agreement with Britain’s General Union (GMB) to prevent the redundancies going ahead. The handling firm also unveiled a controversial change to its shift system, whereby all existing employees could be forced to work six days a week. GMB branded the new system, “unworkable,” warning of extensive disruption over the festive period.

Customer service personnel, as well as baggage handlers and apron staff, are thought to be the worst affected by the cull. Swissport has encouraged its workers to volunteer for redundancy, but so far, only fifteen people have stepped up to the chopping block.

Swissport continues to deny that the advent of robotic and automated airport security has contributed to the company’s financial woes. Online check-in facilities, as operated by budget airline, Ryanair, have streamlined airport operations, removing the need for queuing and bickering inside the terminal, but hundreds of security jobs are being lost as a result.

A spokesperson for the British Airports Authority, the current owners of Stansted Airport, was equally concerned about the welfare of check-in staff:

“The airlines are getting into the situation where there’s no need for check-in agents and they don’t need as many staff. Many passengers just print off their own boarding cards now.”

Stansted will continue to operate as normal throughout the Christmas and New Year period.

The saying “It is better to travel than to arrive” obviously pre-dates the age of tight security at airports and the resultant queues. Whilst no-one likes waiting in line, how much would you be prepared to pay to jump the immigration queue?

Starting next year, a trial will be carried out at Stansted airport and then at Heathrow Terminal 4, enabling passengers to pay up to £50 to by-pass the immigration queue, which could easily save them 45 minutes.

Those passengers with the new biometric passports will be able to do this free of charge and, for passengers who fly frequently, it may make financial sense to renew their passport early so that they too can avoid having to pay the charge to fast-track immigration.

At the moment, almost 20 million of us have the biometric passports which were introduced in Mar 2006. EU nationals with biometric passports will also be able to use the fast track initiative free of charge.

The technology at the new automated gates will use biometric information (namely, the distance between a person’s eyes, nose, mouth and ears) to decide whether or not a person has the right to enter the UK. Money made from the scheme will be used to pay back the £7 million spent on the new gates.

Currently the only way of jumping the queue is to register free of charge on the IRIS scheme which works using iris recognition.

Whether many travellers will be willing to part with £50 for the privilege of jumping the queue remains to be seen, given that there are so many other hidden costs of flying. This week BA dealt a blow to travellers by introducing a charge for passengers wishing to pre-book their seats.

Ryanair is continuing to slash its ticket prices to attract increasing numbers of passengers, despite issuing warnings about its projected profits for the year. So far, the profits of the budget airline have been healthy and it recently announced that its net profits were up a whopping 550% for the first three months of the year compared to the same time last year.

However, this can nearly all be put down to the huge 42% drop in the price of fuel over the last few months. Indeed, despite the 11% recorded rise in traffic experienced by the airline, the average fares have fallen by 13%, cancelling this out.

But Ryanair is determined to push ahead with its expansion plans. The whole business model of the company relies upon filling as many seats as it can, but the only way it can currently achieve this is to provide numerous special offers to get more people flying. For example, it regularly provides seats to passengers for as little as £1 or even for free, the aim being that they will then pay for other services when on board. However, this means that the per-seat profit is going steadily down, especially when compared to last year.

Ryanair is now warning that its total profits might be 20% down for the second half of the year compared to the same period last year. It has also warned that its full-year profits are likely to be at the bottom end of the €200 to €300 million.

But the company is not fazed by this. The passenger numbers were up by 11% in the first quarter, with 16.6 million people flying with the airline, meaning the company should reach its target of 67 million passengers by the end of the year. Chief executive Michael O’Leary was also defiant, saying that “we will continue to expand as others fail”.

Budget airline, Ryanair, announced last week that it would be making sweeping cuts in services out of Stansted this winter. Chief executive, Michael O’Leary, who has become notorious for his cost cutting ideas such as charging passengers to use the aircraft toilets, has announced reductions of 670 flights a week; this will be made up of reductions in frequency on 30 routes and the scrapping of 10 routes.

Although Ryanair has in the past made reductions on certain routes in the winter, this year’s cuts look much more far reaching. The routes most likely to be affected are those to parts of France where, although many Brits have holiday homes, they do not use them between the months of November and February. Spain is likely to come off better since the climate means that it is a year round destination for travellers from the UK, particularly since the Spanish government scrapped tourist taxes. Some Irish routes are likely to be axed altogether.

The reduction in flights is likely to mean that the airline's passenger numbers for the winter will drop by 2.5 million. Mr O’Leary blames BAA charges and government taxes for the cuts. O’Leary has already asked BAA to reduce its charges for the winter months and threatened to switch the aircraft being withdrawn from Stansted to other European countries which “welcome tourists instead of taxing them”.

The only people likely to welcome the cuts are the long suffering residents who are so badly affected by living under the flight path and who have campaigned so vigorously against the planned expansion of the airport.

Ryanair has been responsible for a few rather strange ideas in relation to getting prices down on its flights. These have recently included charging passengers each time they want to use the toilet on board the flight. But now The Sun has reported that it has come up with a new idea that it claims to be seriously considering, and that is getting people to stand up for the duration of the flight.

When they say stand up, what they really mean is that rather than seating passengers in proper seats, instead they will get them to sit on seats that have more resemblance to bar stools complete with seatbelts. It doesn’t sound comfy, and it doesn’t really sound feasible, but Ryanair is deadly serious and has even announced that it is in talks with Boeing about the possibility of installing such a system.

The idea seems to have come from another airline, the Chinese carrier Spring, which is also said to be considering such plans. With airlines across the world feeling the pinch of the recession, they are looking to cut costs and increase passenger numbers wherever they can, and sometimes this means thinking outside the box.

The head of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, is apparently now looking for approval from the Irish Aviation Authority before any firm decision is made to check that it would be permitted. A spokesman for the company said that "if they approve it, we'll be doing it". Apparently it could lead to a 20-30% increase in passengers and a 20% decrease in costs, so we could well be seeing it come into force in the near future.

The recession has well and truly taken its toll on the airline sector, as revealed by new reports on passenger numbers by BAA. The results make for bleak reading for the industry, as the largest airport owner in the UK stated that the passenger numbers passing through all of its airports in May this year were 900,000 down on May 2008.

Overall, the drop across all of its airports was a significant 7.4%. However, the airport to fare the worst was Stansted, with passenger numbers down by a massive 18.5%. On top of that, for the first five months of the year the figure dropped by 15% compared to last year.

This has led Ryanair, one of the largest of the budget airlines, to call for the fast-tracked sale of the airport to sort the situation out sooner.

BAA has been forced by the Competition Commission to sell a number of its airports, including Gatwick and Stansted, in order to break up its monopoly in the UK. However, now Ryanair wants the sale of Stansted to be carried out as soon as possible as a result of its frustration over the dwindling passenger numbers.

A spokesman for Ryanair, Stephen McNamara, said that the quick sale of the airport would “tackle plummeting traffic”. But he also called on the government to “protect UK tourism and UK jobs”.

This was a reference to the government’s decision to add a £10 Airport Passenger Duty, also known as the tourist tax, which will come into force in November this year. Ryanair is worried this could exacerbate the problem, and is asking the government to scrap the tax for the sake of the industry.

There’s bad news to come out of Ryanair as the no-frills airline just posted its first ever annual loss. The overriding factors behind the loss were the higher fuel costs that the company had to put up with during 2008 along with the lowering of the value of its stake in Aer Lingus.

The net loss made in the year up to 31 March was €169 million, which compares to a profit of €481 million the previous year. This loss was greater than many analysts had been expecting. However, despite this figure, the annual sales rose by 8.4% this year.

The fuel costs were the deciding factor, with Ryanair stating that this rose from €791.3 million to €1.26 billion this year. There were huge fluctuations in the price of oil throughout 2008: in July 2008 fuel costs rose to $147 a barrel, but later in the year they dropped down again as the recession took its hold.

Ryanair currently has a 29.8% stake in Aer Lingus, whom it has approached to take over a couple of times now, but it was also forced to write this down by €222 million after the share price of the company fell.

However, if the Aer Lingus factor and the fuel price were taken out of the equation, Ryanair would have made a profit of €105 million, which would still have been a fall on the year before but a profit nonetheless.

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, said that the airline wants to “drive fares materially lower” despite the recession. He also stated that the company is growing strongly, stating that this year it will “carry twice the total number of passengers as British Airways”.

If you have travelled through Stansted Airport recently, you may have been tempted to try out the new facial recognition machines that have been installed in a landmark trial. The new technology has arrived at the airport in a bid to improve waiting times for passengers and to add an extra level of security at passport control.

The new machines work by scanning the face of the traveller and then comparing it to the digital photo that is stored on their biometric passport. After making the scan, the machines measures a series of points on the traveller's face to compare it to the passport photo to see how well they match. It can then instantly tell if they are the same person and allow them through the gate. The system is also intelligent enough to recognise when people have changed their appearance since their passport photo was last taken.

It is currently only available to UK or European citizens, and only to those who carry a biometric passport. However, no registration process is involved.

The trial is a joint partnership between BAA and the UK Border Agency. The assistant director of the UK Border Agency, Barry McGill, said that the gates should be used to “reduce the time you spend at passport control”.

Although Stansted is the first place in the country to get the machines, the technology will also be available in 10 other airports by August of this year, and it could soon become the standard method used at passport controls across the world. However, airports are still likely to rely to an extent on traditional technology in the form of manual checks which will be carried out at random.

We have all become familiar with having to pay for extras on budget airlines; it started with being charged for food and drinks and has gradually extended to having to pay to check in luggage or for “speedy boarding”. Ryanair, however, has taken the art of charging for “extras” to another level!

Recently there has been talk of a “fat tax” for male passengers weighing over 130kg and females over 100kg, a charge for using the toilet on board and the latest suggestion is axing baggage handlers and making passengers carry their own luggage through security to the foot of the steps at the plane and picking it up at the other end.

The airline, however, has said that it will not go ahead with the plans if it means their quick turnaround is affected. It was this concern that put the fat tax on hold since it was felt that it would delay both check-in and turnaround times.

As from this October, passengers will have to check-in online (something which three quarters of all their passengers do already) as there will be no Ryanair check-in desks at airports. The airline expects to save over £44 million a year by introducing this measure.

Ryanair was the first of the budget airlines to charge passengers for hold luggage and this has resulted in about 75% of their passengers restricting themselves to bags which can be taken on board. Last summer the airline announced proposals to ban hold luggage altogether on several of its non-tourist routes popular with business travellers.

SSE (Stop Stansted Expansion) campaigners are disappointed to have lost their High Court battle to halt the plans for the expansion of Stansted airport. BAA, the authority which runs Stansted, wants passenger numbers to rise from 25 million a year to 35 million and flights from the airport to increase from 241,000 to 264,000 a year.

Their legal argument was based on the premise that the government had failed to take proper account of “adverse effects” when it gave the go-ahead for the expansion. SSE spokesman, Paul Stinchcombe, told High Court judge, Sir Thayne Forbes, that the government had not taken into consideration the effect on UK trade, the noise levels and the environmental effects, despite the fact that it had previously agreed that it should take these factors into consideration.

The judge dismissed the argument, refused the right to appeal and ordered the group to pay £20,000 costs.

Nick Barton, commercial and development director of Stansted airport, said that the news was great for the millions of people who want to fly from the Essex airport, whether on business or for pleasure, the thousands of people who work there, and the businesses across the region which depend on the airport.

The Department of Transport has also welcomed the decision, saying that runway space is so scarce in the south east that it makes sense to make optimum use of what is already available.

BAA would like to open a second runway and a public enquiry is due to start next month.

When the Competition Commission releases its final report in March on the subject of BAA’s monopoly of UK airports, it will very likely call for the company to be broken up. BAA has already accepted that it will probably have to sell up to three of its seven airports, and as a result Gatwick has already been put up for sale with the aim of having the sale complete by May of this year.

However, the company has so far resisted calls to sell off Stansted Airport, which sees 23 million passengers passing through each year and is the most important airport in Europe for budget flights. The company has previously said that it would go to court over the demands that it sell Stansted and either Edinburgh or Glasgow, claiming that the plans of the Competition Commission were unfair.

However, following the decision to allow Heathrow to get its controversial third runway, it seems that BAA is in no mood to push its luck. Realising that Heathrow is by far its most important airport, and that it will soon be handling even more flights, it has begun to see the sale of Stansted as a way to raise some much needed capital.

But although it has all but accepted that it will not be able to hold onto the airport, the company will probably fight over the decision of when it will have to sell up. BAA has applied to build a second runway at the airport, so this may well see the Competition Commission relaxing its stance on when it has to be sold.

In the small hours of Monday morning a group of more than fifty protesters from the environmental group, Plane Stupid, breached the perimeter fence of Stansted airport using bolt cutters. Armed with concrete blocks and their own security fencing which they chained themselves to, they were able to bring about the delay and cancellation of dozens of flights and ultimately, they brought misery to the travelling public.

The climate change action group claimed that they regretted the inconvenience caused to passengers but that the action was necessary because they had been let down by their parents’ generation over CO2 emissions. They said that although they were afraid of being arrested and ending up in prison, they were more afraid of the impact of climate change. Although some of the passengers concerned were sympathetic to what the protesters were trying to achieve, there was little sympathy for their actions.

Essex police made 57 arrests and charged the majority with aggravated trespass whilst four were charged with conspiracy to commit a public nuisance and three with gaining access to a restricted area. Concerns were raised about the fact that the protesters had been able to breach security in the way they did, with many members of the public expressing fears that a terrorist group could have done the same thing with devastating consequences. Nick Barton, commercial director of BAA at Stansted, said that he was happy with security measures and made the point that the runway is a huge area (2000 acres) and that no-one wanted to run the airport like a fortress.

Stansted Airport has once again been rewarded for maintaining a focus upon environmental management despite aiming to increase its passenger numbers. In 2005, the airport was awarded the IS014001 certificate which honours the successful management of environmental issues. It is currently the biggest airport in the United Kingdom to have been given this award.

A recent independent assessment found that Stansted had continued to manage such environmental issues very well and the airport therefore managed to retain its certification. The airport has strived hard to protect the environment and has introduced schemes including a biomass heating boiler. This boiler was installed as part of the recent terminal expansion and its introduction has ensured that the terminal is now completely carbon neutral. The airport, which has also been praised for encouraging travellers to access the terminal via public transport, will be able to keep this certification until 2011, at which point a further assessment will be carried out.

Andy Jefferson, the head of environment for BAA Stansted, has revealed that the officials at the airport were extremely proud of achieving the certification in 2005 and they have been thrilled at “maintaining” the honour by “continually striving to improve” all areas of their performance.

Jefferson revealed that managing the environment is not merely a side-project for the officials at the airport but actually remains “critical to the sustainability” of the business carried out at Stansted. The thorough assessment necessary to maintain the certification involved inspection of various parts of the airport’s operation and the officials take the whole process very seriously.

Last week, two MPs from Suffolk held talks with a government minister in an attempt to gain support for their aim of changing proposals for a new holding stack for Stansted Airport. The MPs, named as David Ruffley and Tim Yeo, met with Jim Fitzpatrick to air their concerns at the new proposals. Stansted Airport wishes to introduce fairly dramatic changes to their airspace. Approximately twenty-five peaceful villages between the areas of Stowmarket and Hadleigh are now at risk of being changed forever.

Residents in the villages are worried that they will have to listen to a noisy plane every two minutes during the day. The villages are renowned throughout the country for their tranquility and peaceful atmosphere, and these new proposals from Stansted Airport are threatening to bring an end to such a positive reputation. Many people decide to move to the area in an attempt to escape the pressures of city life, but how many people will want to put up with the noise emitted from jet planes?

One thing is for sure: the residents are not taking the news lightly and it is clear that they will not succumb to the proposals without putting up a fight. David Ruffley spoke publicly about his belief that Jim Fitzpatrick should be made aware of the potentially “devastating effect” which the changes to the airspace could bring. He believes that the rural areas affected by the proposal will dramatically feel the impact of the “new holds”. According to Ruffley, since the “level of ambient noise” in the area is lower than in other regions, the “noise overhead will be all the more noticeable”.

The Government has approved an increase in passenger numbers and flights at Stansted airport, much to the disgust of locals and environmentalists. In last week's written statement to Parliament, Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary, announced that permission had now been given for an extra 10 million passengers (increased from 25 million to 35 million) and 23,000 flights (up from 241,000 to 264,000) a year.

It is almost two years since the district council refused permission because of fears over noise and environmental concerns. Now a lengthy public enquiry following BAA’s appeal has resulted in the Government overturning the decision.

Stansted’s managing director has spoken of the benefits for passengers and local businesses but environmentalists are furious over the apparent hypocrisy of a government, which has given a commitment to tackling climate change. This came most recently at the Labour party conference when international aviation was mentioned as a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, which the party has pledged to reduce by 80% by 2050.

The Department of Transport has said that any impact on health caused by air pollution would be small and that any effects on nearby protected woodland would not be sufficient to justify upholding the appeal.

Uttlesford District Council has six weeks in which to lodge a further appeal. A spokesman has expressed his disappointment at the decision and spoken of the impact on the quality of life for local residents. The Government has meanwhile said that this decision in no way implies their support for a second runway.

On Oct 13th a group of anti-expansion protesters, some dressed as suffragettes to mark the anniversary of their rush on Parliament, tried unsuccessfully to gain entry to the Houses of Parliament.

Ryanair mooted the idea of transatlantic flights for $12 last April, but no more was heard and it was written off by many as just a dream. However, 17 months on and with the aviation industry in crisis, the playing field has changed and last week Michael O’Leary resurrected the idea of low cost flights to New York from Stansted, Prestwick and Birmingham.

Ryanair would set up a totally new company solely to operate these routes. They have been quoted as saying that “the whole European agenda has changed” making it easier for their bid for Aer Lingus, the Irish national carrier, to be approved. If their bid is successful, they would plan to use the 15 new planes ordered by Aer Lingus for their new transatlantic route and are also in talks regarding acquiring some of the new Boeing 787s, now cheaper to lease than before due to the problems in the industry.

The deputy chief executive of the airline has said that many of the smaller European carriers are unlikely to survive and feels that the European Commission should let the “grossly inefficient and polluting airlines” such as Alitalia and Olympic Airways go under, rather than allow governments to help them keep their heads above the water.

At a time when the rising cost of fuel and airlines going bust right left and centre has heralded misery for travellers, the prospect of cheap flights to New York is an interesting one. Many will no doubt hope, however, that Ryanair will ditch their plan to allow mobile phones to be used on flights from this month!

Ryanair has been heavily criticised for taking advantage of the current problems in the aviation industry and making what some have described as “thinly veiled threats” to its 1700 pilots.

With the recent collapses of airlines such as Zoom, Futura and the giant XL, Ryanair may be forgiven for thinking that they have the upper hand but pilots are furious over a memo sent to them recently. The leaked memo said that the airline had imposed a recruitment freeze after having been swamped with applications from pilots who have recently found themselves without a job and from those who are afraid that their current employers are set to go bust, and the memo asks for volunteers to take unpaid leave over the winter.

According to the memo, if insufficient numbers are willing to put themselves forward by the end of the month, then the airline will allocate unpaid leave to some of the pilots based at Stansted and Dublin starting from November. The strike at Boeing has also been blamed by the airline for delays in the delivery of aircraft resulting in fewer pilots being required.

In July, Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, announced that net profits for the first three months of 2008 had dropped by 85% but he was in bullish mood and expressed his confidence that the airline would not only survive the credit crunch but that he would continue to cut fares. Success would come, he said, not only by reducing fares but by cutting winter flights and profiting from the demise of his competitors.

Airlines have found themselves in a bit of trouble in the last few years. With the soaring cost of fuel and the environmental issues, many travellers are looking at other means of transport or just not travelling at all. But one of the leading airlines Ryanair (whose profits have been reported as dropping 85% in the last year) has come up with a new idea for improving business: they could be offering hand-luggage only flights.

In order to save thousands of pounds on baggage handlers and more importantly on fuel, as a plane without any luggage would be a much lighter one, the idea is to allow passengers to bring onboard only what can be put in the over-heads and that’s it. It’s obviously not being proposed for holiday-makers but the idea is for these flights to appeal to the early morning and midweek departures, which have a high number of commuters on board.

Ryanair has found itself in a bit of a spin of late and, due to the above drop in percentage profits, has been forced to pull a few of its routes to cities such as Budapest, Valencia and Palma, which were at one time high-earners for the Irish firm. They are speaking to 147 airports about finding ways to strike up a better deal and they aren’t the only ones in the airline industry looking for new initiatives to turn things around. We’ve had fast-track check ins and the removal of ovens on flights so hand-luggage seems like a good addition to the plan.

The global financial crisis is certainly having an effect on passenger numbers at airports. Figures recently released for the month of June show a decrease for London’s Stansted, Heathrow and Gatwick airports, whilst London City airport has just predicted that, although they will not experience an overall drop this year, they expect growth to slow down.

At Stansted passengers were down by 5.7% to just under 2.1 million. The only growth area is the Irish market which is up by 2.6% with all other routes showing decreases in passenger figures. The recent announcement, however, that Ryanair is to ground 150 of its flights from Dublin this winter will of course have an adverse effect, with a 14% decrease in flights to Stansted expected.

Heathrow’s passenger numbers were down by 0.9% to just less than 6 million. The good news for the airport was, however, that long haul numbers were on the up, with North Atlantic traffic growing by 10.7%. The biggest reduction was in the Irish market which slumped by 15.2%. With the rising costs at Dublin airport forcing Ryanair to cut back this winter, Heathrow may well turn out to benefit from this move.

Gatwick's figures showed a drop of 1.1% to just over 3.3 million. It has, however, seen a rise of 30.5% in its passengers on the Irish routes although its North Atlantic figures are down, possibly because of the move to Heathrow of several operators.

With over two thirds of London City’s passengers being business travellers the airport is predicting a slower rate of increase this year, predicted at around 12% to 15% compared with last year’s 23%. If any reduction in holiday traffic happens it will be towards the end of the year, according to an airport spokesman, with most of the leisure travellers having booked their flights well in advance.

It was recently reported that the number of passengers flying into and out of Stansted airport has fallen yet again. Last month the airport handled 2,019,500 passengers, a 3.3% decrease when compared to May of last year. In the twelve months to May 2008 passengers were down by 1.6%.

Campaigners for the group "Stop Stansted Expansion" were predictably heartened by the news, pointing out that this was the seventh successive month in which numbers had fallen. They have called for BAA to give up on its plans for a second runway, saying that in the last six months, during which time Stansted lost its three routes to America, it has reverted to being an airport for cheap domestic and European flights.

The loss earlier this month of its last service to New York, operated by American Airlines (only seven months after its introduction) was heralded by campaigners as proof that the airport was not succeeding in its long haul aspirations and that the ambition of becoming another Heathrow was not going to be as easy to achieve as had been hoped.

A spokesman for the airport has countered the campaigners' argument, by blaming the downward trend on the global situation, explaining that Heathrow too has suffered a drop in passenger numbers. Stansted personnel are not “unduly worried” according to the spokesman, and are said to be pressing on with plans for the new runway (described by the SSE campaigners as a “white elephant”), which they feel is vital for providing extra flying capacity in the South East.

BAA has launched an extensive information and consultation programme before it continues with expansion at Stansted Airport.

Meetings have been held with community leaders, 27 public planning displays have been erected in the area, and 200,000 local residents have been supplied with the airport's planning newsletter.

BAA are encouraging local residents and businesses to get involved and put forward ideas and opinions, to help them ensure that the airport's expansion causes minimal disruption and damage to the community.

For more information and up-to-date news on Stansted Airport, visit the official news pages.

In 2007, Stansted are submitting an application for the development of a second runway. It will be the first airport in the South East to get a new runway in over 50 years. If everything goes to plan, the second runway is expected to be operational by 2013.

Air travel is growing in popularity, and it is expected that Stansted will be serving 35 million passengers a year by 2015. The purpose of the second runway is to meet this continued growing demand for air travel.