Charles Buchanan

There is expected increased demand for airport capacity across the South East during the Olympics. Thanet’s Manston airport, along with Lydd and Rochester, have been allocated slots to manage the demand

Manston Airport is expecting an increase in flights during the Olympic Games.

The airport has been given extra slots during July and August as part of a wider plan to prevent overcrowding at Heathrow.

Airport chief executive Charles Buchanan said: “This was part of a Department of Transport assessment of airport capacity during the Olympics to make sure enough would be anticipated.

“They concluded there was sufficient capacity but it would be needed to be managed very carefully to deal with the demand. It was agreed that all airports in the South East would be slot co-ordinated, which is a system that is used at other busy airports such as Heathrow and Gatwick, for the temporary period over the Games.”

Lydd and Rochester airports have also been allocated a number of slots by Airports Coordination Limited, the company set up by Government to handle airport demand during the Games.

Manston Airport has the capacity to handle as many as 192 slots per day during the two-week period, although in reality airport managers say this is unlikely to happen.

Mr Buchanan said: “We have then told them the amount of slots that we would have available on an hour-by-hour basis for arrivals and departures. We anticipate taking quite a lot of corporate and VIP traffic. There will be a certain amount of chartered spectator traffic. There will also be both sporting and broadcasting equipment that will need to be flown in.”

“Some of that will be arriving weeks before the Games; obviously spectators will arrive closer to the events they want to watch.”

More than 40 night time slots per day are available at Manston. Mr Buchanan said when flights were actually allocated would be subject to many factors.

He said: “This will be completely be led by customer demand. When people want to fly is subject to all sorts of other things such as aircraft availability, departure times from the originating airport and other pressures on the schedule.”

Mr Buchanan said the Olympics were a chance for the airport to show its potential.

He said: “We are in common with any other business that wants to use the Olympics as a showcase to demonstrate our capabilities. That is the value of the legacy of the Olympics to the country as a whole, whether your skills are designing stadiums to your ability to handle aircraft traffic.

“We have already had a dry run during the Open Golf Championship at Sandwich, when we had 70 additional flights during the course of that week last year.”

The airport’s operators expect interest in the airports slots would begin to increase in March and April.

Mr Buchanan said: “We believe we have a fantastic location here with ready access to the right side of London which allows people to get to the games both for spectators but also for consignments of cargo. The majority of people coming to the games have yet to make their final travelling plans.”

Thanet council is currently carrying out a consultation until Friday March 2 with local people on Manston airport’s plans for regular night flights between 11pm and 7am. Visit www.thanet.gov.uk.