What makes this regional airport the best in the UK?

What inspires your route development? 

Newcastle International prides itself on being an airport for the people – Your Airport. We listen to our customers and work hard to provide routes that are in demand for northeast travellers. We received a lot of feedback to provide a direct route to Barcelona, and are pleased that Ryanair introduced a twice-weekly year-round service from November 2022. We have already received a lot of positive engagement with this and continue to work hard to secure new airline partners and more choice of routes.  Since emerging from the pandemic we now have more airline partners than we had in 2019 – 16 in total for 2022.

This year we had our largest ever programme to Greece, Turkey and the Canaries, driven by Jet2 and Tui who have both invested additional based aircraft at Newcastle. Ryanair has also opened a base and now flies to 22 destinations from Newcastle, which include new routes to Chania, Milan, Riga, Zadar, Barcelona, Cork and Shannon. Loganair also introduced Bergen in Norway and easyJet has reintroduced summer services to Palma. Lastly we have welcomed Corendon Airlines to our airline portfolio, which flies direct to Antalya and Dalaman, both of which are popular destinations from the northeast of England.

We continuously strive to not only increase our broad portfolio of direct and connecting holiday destinations, but aim to deliver services that are highly in demand across the region.

What’s been the key to Newcastle Airport’s success?

Newcastle Airport demonstrated fast security processes before the pandemic and in the past year we have achieved 99% of passengers travelling through security in six minutes or less. Maintaining these low security queue times has been a challenge but the staff have been amazing. Careful planning, flexibility and a real positive attitude from the whole team has been key to our success. However, we recognise that security is only one part of our customers’ journey and we have worked hard across all areas of the business to ensure as a collective we can offer the best service possible. 

How are you helping all passengers have a better experience?

We want all our passengers to have a smooth process when travelling from the airport and to support this the team have done a great job at delivering new initiatives. We believe we were the first UK airport to undertake an Apple Air Tags trial to support visually impaired passengers collecting their luggage. Here, we worked with the Thomas Pocklington Trust, a national charity that supports blind and partially sighted people, and hope the results from this experiment will help many visually impaired passengers in future.

We have also worked closely with the North East Autism Society for many years. We actively promote the Hidden Disability Lanyard Scheme and we have a story book that outlines the airport experience for children with autism. In addition to this we have downloadable Autism Passports that can be shown to airport staff so they can provide the most impactful support to the travelling party.

We can also offer quieter zones, security fast track and priority boarding for those who need the extra support. Our passenger services team is always on hand to support passengers needing assistance through the airport and boarding and disembarking the aeroplane.

What are you doing to save energy and promote sustainability?

We are on track to be a net zero carbon airport by 2035, significantly earlier than many other European airports’ target of 2050. To reach this, we have taken delivery of the UK’s first electric airside bus, which has now been followed by a second, the first phase of transitioning to a fully electric fleet of airside vehicles. We have added carbon offsetting to our car park booking process, allowing passengers to offset their car journey to and from the airport, by donating to a woodland planting scheme on airport land.

Additionally, we have planted over 8,300 trees on airport land in collaboration with the North East Community Forest Scheme. We have recently begun construction on the first phase of the airport’s solar farm project. The solar farm will begin generating renewable electricity to the airport from February 2023. 

Furthermore, we have implemented energy saving measures across the site, from escalator turn-off programmes to light efficiency improvements, and are regularly identifying opportunities to further reduce our energy consumption and manage our waste more efficiently.