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Recovery from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and a move to decarbonisation have been revealed as the key priorities for Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL) over the next five years.
However, managing director Inglis Lyon has warned that it may take until 2024 before air traffic returns to pre-Covid levels.
HIAL’s newly launched 2021-2026 strategic plan also commits the 11 airport group to continue to support economic prosperity and deliver social benefit for communities throughout the Highlands and Islands.
HIAL is already leading a £3.7million consortium decarbonisation project at Kirkwall Airport and aims to make all its airports carbon-neutral, helping Scotland create the world’s first net zero emission aviation region by 2040.
While Covid-19 has added a severe and unexpected disruption to HIAL’s forward planning, the decarbonisation of operations and delivering an environmentally sustainable future for aviation services in the Highlands and Islands remains the overall strategic priority.
HIAL chairwoman Lorna Jack said: “HIAL’s mission is to create social benefit and economic prosperity by building Scotland’s sustainable regional airport group of the future.
“We recognise we must explore safe, but also different operating models to decarbonise our operations and enable greener air services. With new advances in technology, cleaner air travel will become more viable – and our aim is for HIAL to be at the forefront of Scotland’s efforts to transition to a low carbon future – both in aviation and as a nation
“Many of the opportunities identified in this plan will not be realised without new initiatives and support from our partners. We will work closely with the Scottish Government and others to achieve our long-term vision of becoming a net-zero carbon regional airport group.”
The global health crisis presented by Covid-19 has been a particularly challenging time for the travel and aviation industry and affected every aspect of HIAL’s operations.
Its largest airport at Inverness, which exceeded 946,000 passengers in 2019, saw passenger numbers drop to just over 246,000 in 2020 due to travel restrictions. By the end of December 2020, the total year-on-year decline in passenger numbers was 66 per cent, with a reduction in aircraft movement of 42 per cent across all its airports.
Since early March 2020 HIAL’s priority has been to protect staff and passengers, while continuing to maintain the viability of the lifeline services.
All airports were made Covid-19 secure with the early adoption of a comprehensive series of measures including effective passenger management, enhanced cleaning programmes, the use of sanitiser and the introduction of a broad range of PPE.
Closure to routine flights took effect from March 29, 2020 and HIAL worked closely with Transport Scotland and airline Loganair to agree a skeleton schedule that continued to provide essential services to remote island communities, including emergency NHS passenger transfer, Royal Mail services and support for the offshore energy industry.
Managing director, Inglis Lyon, said: “The pandemic will continue to have a significant impact on everyone’s lives and considerable impact on our business. However, it has also underlined the significant – even critical – role that HIAL’s airports continue to play in maintaining connectivity for our communities.
“Our staff also demonstrated impressive resilience and a genuine commitment to their communities despite extremely challenging circumstances and deserve our thanks.
“The customer experience has been seriously impacted by pandemic mitigation measures and air services have also been dramatically reduced. Recovery will take time and we aim to rebuild passenger numbers to 2019 levels by 2024/25.
“By protecting air access to communities, we play our part in ensuring that these often more remote communities remain sustainable. We will continue to work with the Scottish Government, partner agencies and our airline partners to retain key routes and to bring in new services where existing ones are cancelled.”
HIAL is also moved forward with its plans to centralise its air traffic management system.
The HIAL Strategy and Covid-19 Recovery Plan 2021-26 is available to download via www.HIAL.co.uk
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