Teesside International Airport

Since bringing Teesside International Airport back into public ownership and saving it from closure, Mayor Houchen has set to work on his 10-year turnaround plan. In the face of a global pandemic in 2020 and 2021, which seriously impacted the global aviation industry, the Mayor helped secure Ryanair as a low-cost carrier, and new routes with TUI, one of the UK’s leading travel companies. The plan now aims to hit 1.4million passengers in the next ten years and generate potentially thousands of jobs for local people.

The airport now operates year-round flights to Alicante, as well as holiday flights to Antalya, Corfu, Dalaman, Faro, Majorca and Bulgaria, alongside the regular KLM route to Amsterdam, connecting Tees Valley with more than 160 destinations worldwide.

But the plan isn’t just about flights to London or the Costa del Sol – it is about creating jobs and securing investment. Alongside the new state-of-the-art logistics and manufacturing park on the airport’s Southside, global aviation firm Willis Asset Management Limited has chosen Teesside International Airport as its location for a European aircraft maintenance base to carry out maintenance, storage and disassembly of a wide variety of commercial aircraft types. Aviation firm Draken Europe has also doubled its operations at the airport and Teesside International is leading the sector in net zero innovations, including the piloting of hydrogen vehicles and adoption of sustainable aviation fuel.