Steve Gill, Managing Director, details Bournemouth Airport’s unique positioning for operators looking to lock in future growth opportunity

The Bournemouth team proudly promote our unique ‘One Team’ service proposition and our geographical position – offering the dual benefits of shorter average flight times and fast highway access to London, the UK Midlands and beyond.

We’re blessed by being close enough to the capital to act as a viable alternative access point. But since we aren’t located within the London air traffic zone or formally designated as a London airport, we also enjoy uncongested airspace and freedom from the more restrictive elements of air service bilateral agreements, which can limit frequency of flights from some key global source market countries into the London area.

Located outside of the core congested London zone and with a substantive airfield at our disposal, we have exciting near-term plans to develop a new cargo zone which brings with it expansive future opportunity to further extend our air cargo aircraft handling service, along with the associated airside cargo warehouse facilities.

You may not know that retained within the same overall ownership as the airport itself, is an existing 200-acre business and logistics park and also a significant additional real estate portfolio immediately adjacent to the airfield site. This offers large-scale opportunities, with one million square feet of consented future development.

Located, as we are, at the end of one of the major highway trunk routes to London (that corridor, incidentally, being well recognised as one of the wealthiest and more populous of the suburban zones of the capital) we are perfectly located for logistics businesses to co-locate their distribution warehouses directly alongside the airport’s own cargo handling infrastructure. 

Other major cargo airports on the European continent have already proven this co-location model and the benefits are clear for all to see: significant improvements in reducing overall package handling time from aircraft to final mile delivery, very substantial handling process savings directly contributing to reduced labour and infrastructure costs, and demonstrable environmental benefits derived from reduced average aircraft flight times and elimination of unnecessary and duplicated trucking.

We have a clear target to double our air cargo throughput in the coming years, but our aspirations don’t end there.  We are an approachable, efficient team with a ‘can do’ approach well used to acting quickly to deliver innovative solutions – our cargo sales team would welcome the chance to demonstrate how Bournemouth can partner with your business to help deliver on your own long-term business development goals.