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Representation by Mr Ian Nassif

Date submitted
7 October 2018
Submitted by
Members of the public/businesses

POSITIVE REASONS FOR KEEPING MANSTON AS AN AIRPORT. 1. Existing airport facilities. 2. Infrastructure. 3. Water 4. Use as diversionary airport 5. Local employment and education. 6. Travel

  1. Existing Airport facility. Manston as an airport facility is virtually ready to ‘go’. Riveroak have shown what they need to do to bring the airport back into full commercial use, but the basic facility is there, i.e the 9,000 ft long runway along with water drainage and electrical supply.
  2. Local infrastructure has been in place for a number of years and includes full dual carriageway and motorway access within one mile of the airport running alongside existing and developing commercial estates.
  3. Water: Southern Water have no problem in the airport being re-opened as a commercial operation.
  4. Use as a Diversionary airport. In the past eight weeks two BA aircraft have suffered technical problems which caused disruption at Gatwick. The return of Manston as a full emergency diversionary airport would allow other regional facilities (Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stanstead, Birmingham and Manchester) to carry on operating with minimum disruption in the case of not only technical problems but those also terrorist related.
  5. Local employment and education. Leaving the EU will enable Britain to set up trading relationships with the rest of the world with our own trading and customs policy. Possibility of setting up Manston as a ‘Free Port’ which will provide incentives to the supply chains of domestic and foreign companies. This will provide increased trading activity within the Manston Airport area and thereby increase the economic activity in the surrounding area as business move close to the Free Port area. The use of the airport as a ‘dissassembly’ point for out of hours aircraft would attract specialist skills in the recycling of aircraft parts. These are vitally important for Thanet and the surrounding area which still has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country* at 5.1% which is 1.7% higher than the South East average and job density** of 0.59 against the regional and national level of 0.88 and 0.84 respectively. *Office of national Statistics (ONS) April 2017 –March 2018 **Ratio of total jobs to population aged 16 – 64.

6 Travel. Reinstating Manston as a commercially viable airport would in time provide the opportunity to restart commercial passenger services. I understand that at least one leading carrier has shown interest in bringing back passenger flights to Manston.

IAN NASSIF