Bergerac airport is in trouble

That sounds like one for James to watch - thanks Hilary!

Well put, we have airports in Albi and Castres but even though Albi is classed as unesco world heritage and is far bigger than bergerac it's obvious to everyone that it just isn't viable running either airport with Toulouse just an hour away. Rodez manages to do organise a few flights a week in the summer but not worth it in winter - it isn't a question of putting on more flights - there are only so many tourists/expats that want to go there. Or are we wanting to go down the spanish example of building multi million euro airports and then not even bothering to open them because they're not viable/will start making even bigger loses if they are opened...?! see here for more ;-)

Oh and, perhaps I'm missing something here, but what is there in and around Bergerac which means international business people need to fly in and out, and if they ever did, why would they need to stay at/around the airport...?

Oh a Public,Private ,Partnership what larks. Actually Hilary the French are quite good at planning. I might suggest that the vast proportion of business travel goes to Bordeaux and Toulouse where you can get proper scheduled flights from a fully equipped all weather all year round airport close to the sites of Gironde and the South West's principal business activities (not including wine) that is to say aerospace and nuclear research.

Yes, I would think if you lived near Bergerac it would be much easier to use the airport there versus driving in from Brive unless the price made it worthwhile I guess. We live in SE Dordogne so closer to Brive than Bergerac.

Veronique,

Keep calm....(it's only a suggestion)....I wasn't advocating 'business suites for terminally disorganised...sad weirdos'.....so you can put your dart gun away for now...You have an amusing writing style which vividly conveys your hatred of the places....made me smile too.

I saw an excellent Norwegian film on TV a couple of weeks ago that I think, judging by your taste in books you would appreciate....You may already know it as it has won alot of awards and I think is the highest grossing Nordic film so far. Made in 2011 it is 'HEADHUNTERS'.....very clever, very unpredictable, a bit of gore, but bearable...(shades of Tarantino, I think) and definitely one not too miss....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headhunters_%28film%29

I did look at returning from the UK via Brive, but then getting back to the Bergerac area..would be a problem ...quite a long drive if one had access to a car and I think that there is virtually no public transport available.?

A taxi ride woulfd be horrendously expensive...

So it looks as though first of all, renewing the airtraffic control side of things needs to be sorted out in order to increase the air traffic to some degree......I'm close to the airport but I don't think I'm right on the flightpath....I appreciate your concerns but if the number of flights were doubled and that ensured the future of the place...then I think that's better than the place closing....

My conference centre,hotel, shops etc complex on the perimeter of the airport was to make it a place where business travellers could access with great ease, get down to business straight away and for the general travelling public's use as well, hence ease of stop-over accomodation, health suites, swimming pool, creche facilities etc..(Not I think, competing with what gite owners have to offer).

If the right people planned this and enough money spent, then the idea is to provide a pleasant place to unwind, just outside the airport, 'on the doorstep'. Thinking about this more, perhaps some house building (infill development to an existing community ?) and a school, also needs to be included to help create a growing community that would make use of the new facilities...and this could in turn provide staff for the airport...the shops & hotel etc......So we are talking about a partnerhip between the council of Bergerac, the airport administrators and private investors... alot of time & money, I know,but I don't think anything piecemeal would work...

I have them all & love them! Also all sorts of other blood-crazed Nordic types - hence my delight at finding a new one esp as I hadn't realised it was out. Do you like (from the other end of Europe) Alicia Gimenez Bartlett? v good, she also writes non-thrillers which are also v g - but I'm not sure if she is translated much. I stock up when I go to Spain.

Business suites eh! Just like the businesses lounges. You know, the places where an overweight junior manager who wishes to prove how important he is plonks his laptop on one sheet then spreads out his bits of paper on another to impress the world that he is a very busy, very important top manager. Me, I call that the junior manager slouch rather than executive lounge, but then I have never been in the ones the real boss types are segregated off into so that their expensive suits are not polluted by the general public's children running around dripping ketchup from their burgers. Try as I may, I could never train my daughters to drip on any of them and given how many there are of both species... At least Bergerac doesn't have many of them flying in Ryanair cattle freight flights ;-)

I flew out and into bergerac only last week with flybe to southampton, i had to wait till the second week of february before flights commenced again after the new year break and even now they are only flying 3 days a week. Flybe have been cutting back their flights to and from bergerac consistently and word is that they are having financial troubles again, i would go on to say that they contribute far more money into the airport then ryanair do. one thing i have noticed recently is that there are more french people using the airline to travel to the uk if the powers to be realise that they are subsidising a airport which is allowing their own people to take their money and spend it in another country then i would think that the writing is on the wall for the airport, i hope not.

Love that kind of thing. Have you read the Wallander ones? I have them if you'd like em?

Oh what a shame I missed you, it would have made the hanging around nice instead of nasty! V glad to have put a smile on your chops :-) One good thing was the murder & mayhem bit of the bookshop was well stocked so I got a lovely new Scandiwegian 'psychopath vs alcoholic policewoman with dysfunctional family' thriller which compensated for the lurking. (Mons Kallentoft, if you like that sort of thing).

There are already 2 bike hire shops in Bergerac at least - are people supposed to arrive by air & immediately strap their luggage onto the bike & then go wherever? I think that would be a very very niche market...

Cakes, now, well possibly - assuming you are catering for people leaving but really? I don't think so. There would be an awful lot of wastage wouldn't there - I am not going to pay for old cake I'm afraid and I doubt anyone else is likely to. Certainly nobody Fr will eat it unless it is goûter time. The café menu as it is now reflects fairly accurately what people want or more precisely, are willing to pay for, it used to be more elaborate.

Glasses of wine etc - this is for GB people isn't it? It might work - I don't see Fr people swigging wine just before getting on a 'plane unless they have a proper meal to go with it, but then I expect the vast majority of people who use the airport are British. On the other hand what with all the horror stories about drunks running amok on 'planes... I don't know.

I don't understand this obsession with tea, I'm sorry but there it is - speaking as a Fr person if I'm going to the airport to get on a 'plane to the UK I'm willing to wait for a proper 'so British ah le 5 o'clock tea experience' in GB & pay through the nose for it, preferably at some swanky London hotel & I certainly won't go for some soulless ersatz at Roumanière. Otherwise if I want tea & nice cake I'll make them both myself. What I DO want at Roumanière is decent coffee, in the aquarium & out of it, and that's about it in terms of consumables. I don't see another type of business making any money at all given the footfall at the airport. I suspect I'm the only person who regularly buys the books in that gifty-type shop, & I'm not going to for much longer unless they do some stock-renewing.

We were at Bdx on Monday too - what a shame - we could have had tapas together :)

Thanks you so much for posting this line ** nobody needs 'business suites' nowadays unless they are terminally disorganised or so up themselves they need a tranquillizing dart.** - you have officially made my Saturday and put a smile on my chops which will stay there whilst I go and wield the hoover.

Does anyone here use Brive airport? If Bergerac does close perhaps this would be a better option than Bordeaux. We use this more than Bergerac.

I suppose we could chuck in that you live very close to the airport and that we are under the landing path, therefore neither of these two households is going to rush out with flags if they did have more flights. As for the 'aquarium' as you rightly describe it, not only would a café be a major innovation but it might just add a tiny smidgeon of humanity to the place. As somebody who has spent four decades doing more long haul flights than short, but a lot of both anyway, I am acutely aware of the fact that 'holiday' fliers are the most impatient, nervous and thoroughly irritating of all. That place brings out the worst in people getting bad tempered and anything to diffuse that would be a great improvement, even if they all have to queue twenty minutes for a lousy coffee or tea and moan about how long.

I think there are five companies actually. As said, our friend comes on a Transavia flight from Rotterdam since he gets free flights with them. I believe Jet2 and Twinjet also, plus there are charter flights. The then Darwin Airline, now called Etihad Regional, applied for a route from Geneva that was turned down. We would have loved that in order to get back to Switzerland for family visits as well as Geneva being one of the key places for the two of us professionally. I have no idea what the reason was but if it is because of the limitations that says it all regarding new companies and destinations. At the same time, nearly as many people from Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands use it as from the UK, all in the Eurozone, so a Sterling oriented idea would not be as clever as it may seem.

Our friend being a pilot has said that air traffic control is inadequate and they can only dock two planes at a time, so with landing turning round with cleaning and all the other stuff they have to do I imagine more flights is difficult. Perhaps, but did not explain, the rules governing airports do not allow more flights because of the limitations.

Since the department has not given the airport as much money as it needs, they are in a tight corner. I agree that flying from Bergerac is far more comfortable than Bordeaux but apart from the number of people I have never had any issues there. It would hit this immediate area badly if something happened to reduce flights or even see it close down. However, with only about 300,000 passengers a year and that being the present capacity it is a difficult economic proposition arguing for more subsidies without the additional facilities. As for conference centre, hotel and so on that would need to convince investors. I remember reading something about hotels in Sud Ouest in the autumn that was about an accommodation crisis in that gîtes, chambre d'hôtes and small hotels are not doing well in the area and that some of the larger hotels, including the budget chains, do not have enough guests for around half of the year. Some have gone out of business in the last couple of years even. So, even if the finance was there and a site available who would invest in it? It is also an airport where uniquely we can turn up half an hour before flying and still check in and get the flight. When we arrive it is quick and easy to get out but the buses into town are only scheduled around flight times. So a restaurant complex, etc, looks like a bad business proposition. The idea seems great but in practice the people who put money into these things want a good return out of it.

It would be good if they can improve the place, but suggest we too are subject of market forces rather than things made for our convenience. That, I fear, is the bottom line.

The only thing that would make a real difference is a café in the aquarium waiting place once people have gone through customs - otherwise all the rest is fairly pointless, all airports are frightful places exactly like bus-stations only worse because they have delusions of grandeur harking back to when air travel was glamorous & not ringfenced with time-consuming security measures against terrorists etc. The very thought of spending even a nano-second longer than absolutely necessary in one curdles my blood, they are all vile, at least Bergerac doesn't pretend to be anything other than a utility.

Trying to turn an airport into somewhere people would want to spend time is I think a pointless exercise because they aren't places in which anyone sane is going to want to spend time unless they have a stopover (& then they haven't any choice in the matter). Arrive & get the hell out is the normal course of events. The only people likely to hang around in airports are probably sad weirdoes and why encourage them. Anyone normal can survive a wait with a book and a cup of decent coffee (& who cares if the waitress is surly, she's hardly your bosom buddy for life). If they need to do business while they wait they can use wifi or a dongle & a laptop or tablet or their telephone, nobody needs 'business suites' nowadays unless they are terminally disorganised or so up themselves they need a tranquillizing dart.

I'm picking someone up at Roumanière this evening on the only flight in/out today & the last thing I want to do is hang around there, I had 2 hours of the hanging around at Bordeaux on Monday waiting for my flight to Germany & I'd rather have stuck red-hot needles in my eyes, frankly.

Easy way to get from Gare St jean to Airport. Tram to Place des Quinconces. then Liane 1 bus Quinconces to airport. Frequent service total cost 1euro 50 for the whole journey on one Tickarte.

Timothy Dalton would be fine...although I think he's retired....never seem to see him in anything these days...I was thinking of the current Bond, 'Craig, Daniel Craig'......

I do think that a free glass of wine/ beer plus nibbles, for early arrivals would be workable and would only add a small amount to any airport charges...