Air passenger expectations not met, director says

An airport masterplan is set to be published before March 2025

The funding made available for facilities at the Isle of Man Airport does not meet the expectations of passengers using it, its director has said.

Gary Cobb said the "future direction" of the Ronaldsway facility would be debated by Tynwald in November, with an airport masterplan put out for consultation thereafter.

Those discussions would "lay out some of the funding required to get the assets to a condition which matches the expectations", he said.

Speaking at the Government Conference, Mr Cobb said there was "no risk" of airlines pulling routes to and from the island at present as they were "all pretty content".

He said the current providers were "all pretty content" but they were commercial entities which constantly review the viability of their routes.

The Government Conference included panel discussions over air and sea connectivity

Mr Cobb made the comments during a series of presentations focussing on Manx air and sea links at the 2024 Government Conference, which also saw questions raised about how a shortage of air traffic controllers (ATCOs) was affecting connectivity.

He said a plan was in place to increase the number of controllers from 16 to 18, but it would be another two years before recruits had completed their training.

In response to concerns about the airport's closing time of 20:45 BST, Mr Cobb said the strict working hours of the air traffic controllers were for safety reasons, but the hours had been extended for 75 days out of 92 in the last three months.

He also said there had been a 41% reduction in cancellations between January and July in comparison to the same period in 2023.

However, Mr Cobb said there had been some instances when the airport runway had been closed for a time to allow for mandatory breaks for controllers that had seen them "publicly mocked", which he said had "sometimes driven people away".

There were "very, very good people at that airport who make it work with very little money and a lot of challenges", he added.