Wednesday 14 November 2012

Thanet Conservatives welcome KLM Manston service


Thanet Conservative Group has welcomed the announcement that KLM will introduce a twice daily service between Manston and Amsterdam in April 2013.

Conservative Group Leader, Cllr Bob Bayford said: “This is very positive news for both Manston Airport and for Thanet, particularly the immediate creation of nearly 30 jobs.

We desperately need jobs here and the Conservative Group has always maintained that the airport could play a crucial role in the regeneration of Thanet.  The Labour administration’s short sighted ‘no night flights’ policy would effectively ban this service, simply because one of the flights is 25 minutes before 7am, yet this is exactly the type of flexibility that the Conservative Group has long argued for.”

Cllr Bayford also noted that the number of valid objections to ‘night flights’ from Labour’s flawed consultation earlier this year was just 1329, whilst KLM’s online survey produced over 9000 responses, 96% of which expressed demand for the service, and 80% of which were from within the Thanet area.

13 comments:

  1. It wasn't a KLM consultation. It was accessed via a website with the Manston Airport logo very prominent but no sign of any equivalent KLM trademark. (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ManstonKLM). Get your facts right Cllr Bayford.

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    1. ooh er mr shirty looks like you understood what was meant so you can presume others will too

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  2. lets hope the hart & co plus the nimmbys dont put a stop to it as its early in the morning it might spoil the last bit of sleep or be classed as a night flight

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  3. Technically it is, as agreed by the council, who wrote the s106 and designated before 7am as night, and infratil , who bought the airport.

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  4. If you think this means "the immediate creation of nearly 30 jobs" you are being naive. There are currently no vacancies on the Manston website and if they do recruit then it wont be until mid March. Some of the promised jobs will be at KLM and I am sure these will be Amsterdam based so if this takes off it will make hardly any difference to Thanet's unemployed.

    You have to hand it to Hart % co, first a new ferry service in Ramsgate and now a second confidence vote for Thanet despite that the knockers said that business would not touch the area with a barge pole when they assumed control.

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    1. Well you really want it both ways, 18:47, for first you knock this new service as doing nothing for Thanet jobs, but then you want Hart's Labour administration credited with bringing it to Thanet. How do you think they will reconcile their 'no to nights flights' stance with an early morning departure scheduled within the banned period 11pm to 7am.

      Also, on the jobs front, they do not have to be at the airport. People flying from there will often use airport taxi services, stay in a local hotel the night before an early flight of after a late one and they might even use a cafe in the area, or fill up their car at a petrol station. It is all business and the more of it the more jobs.

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    2. What about the aquifer and pollution?

      Business and jobs? It's gone bust again with missing fines for overflights and late flights.

      And on the 6:30am breach of night flights it looks as if Infratil are telling TDC rather than the other way around - when/who did TDC approve this change?

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    3. You are beyond hope, 17:55.

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  5. Infratil and TDC are hardly trustworthy after removing the air monitors in 2006 and the complaints system too. Foolish councillors failing to protect the aquifer under the runway and allowing unregulated pollution.

    After a year in power at TDC Clive has proved as irrelvant as Bob's year.

    Infratil sacked more people less than a year ago - looks like an Election Plane 4 weeks before the KCC May 2013 elections.

    Probably any KLM flights (just 80 passengers per plane?) before Manston closes will be brief stopover flights for existing routes as was EUJet and Flybe.

    Council tax strike and arrests needed.

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  6. Replies
    1. Did you think up that gem all by your little old self, 16:18? Any hard evidence to back that statement?

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    2. How about the missing Manston fines under his brief rule? Or illegal overflights and banned planes? Or nightflights? Or the 0% salary fraud he failed to investigate?

      To be fair neither did Clive so we have Tweedledum and Tweedledumber running things. Or at the very least rubber-stamping the ciivl servants salaries and letting Buchanan lead them by the nose.

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    3. Have Buchanan and Infratil been invoiced by TDC and KCC for the missing fines and aquifer pollution? Or are they just going to walk away and leave the place a polluted mess like the Hoverport and Thor? And the councils pretend they never knew anything and couldn't do anything.

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