Many submissions, much lobbying and lashings of emotion in the UK culminated this week in the Airports Commission giving London's Heathrow the nod for expansion.
It also put the relevance of airports to business travel management firmly back into the thoughts of all corporates. One way of doing this is to look at the trend among the low-cost carriers, those airlines that were once completely focused on the leisure market and are now an important element in most corporate travel programmes.
This week Ryanair was been granted slots for nine flights per day at Schiphol, the fourth (behind LHR, CDG and FRA) busiest European airport in terms of passenger numbers.
It has until the end of August to confirm the offer. This is hugely important because since its announcement that it planned to attract business travellers by putting its content on the GDS and offer business-friendly enhancements such as fast-track, it has been evident that the big weakness in the Ryanair business travel strategy has been its airports.
Low-cost carriers have traditionally used secondary airports because the fees were low, the incentives were huge which meant low operating costs, low fares, high ticket sales.
But secondary airports are further away from most business destinations and so often mean more time and money when the total trip cost is taken into account.
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Ryanair has been offered slots at SchipholLondon is a good illustration. It is a leisure and business destination. Ryanair flies to the 'London' airports of Luton and Stansted. As Business Travel iQ said of London Luton at the launch of all business class carrier La Compagnie, "Despite Milton Keynes being headquarters to several big companies including Santander, Makita and Yamaha Europe the number of business travellers wanting to fly this kind of point-to-point niche carrier living or working in the Bedford/Milton Keynes catchment area is bound to be limited."
Just as the number of business travellers who want to fly with Ryanair to Beauvais when they have a meeting in Paris will be few. But easyJet now has an operation in both CDG and ORY which most business travellers do consider Paris.
According to the Dutch paperDe Telegraaf, Schiphol had hoped to attract Ryanair to Lelystad airport, where there are major expansion plans.
Airports with "major expansion plans" tend to be those which have more capacity than traffic so they are keen to attract more carriers — and the consequent footfall to make their retail sites more valuable. The incentives to airlines make operating costs low and so they can offer low basic fares.
Low basic fares on Ryanair are not enough to transform Beauvais or Luton into business airports (although the latter is the busiest airport in the UK for private jets). The extra time and cost with travelling into city centre or the fact that they are unlikely to be used for connecting flights means they are costly for companies and not attractive for business travellers.
The growth of LCCs at major airports is not just a Paris or Amsterdam phenomenon. For example, Vueling and Ryanair continue to grow share at Rome's Fiumicino while easyJet continues to expand at Milan Malpensa as Alitalia falls.
The more that the Vuelings and Ryanairs expand their presence at business hubs, the more attractive they will become to corporate travel programmes.