Leeds Bradford Airport reports 'significant' annual loss despite busiest ever year
The figures came despite the airport delivering its busiest-ever year
Leeds Bradford Airport recorded a loss of more than £6m in the last financial year - with CEO Vincent Hodder saying the figures demonstrate why it needs to expand its operations.
The airport has just filed a loss of £6.6m for the 2025/26 financial year following from a profit in the previous year of £479,000, the Yorkshire Post reports.
The figures came despite the airport delivering its busiest-ever year with passenger numbers up four per cent to 4.4m people. Turnover was up by two per cent to £62.8m.
The largest operators based at LBA are Jet2.com, which accounts for 49 per cent of total passengers, with Ryanair the second largest at 33 per cent.
But the accounts revealed a six per cent rise in operating costs to £39.6m, which Leeds Bradford attributed as being "mainly due to higher staff costs driven by the impact of increases in National Minimum Wage, Real Living Wage and employer National Insurance contribution rates”.
LBA has set out a vision to serve seven million passengers a year by 2030 and is currently seeking council permission to change night-flying rules as part of its strategy. It wants to have around 11 per cent more flights by 2030 compared to current arrangements.
The airport is currently in the midst of a £100m transformation programme which started in 2023. The first phase, which completed in June 2025, included the creation of a new arrivals and baggage claim, alongside an extended departure lounge and new security gates.
The second phase, which started in July 2025, will see а refurbishment of the existing terminal building with completion scheduled for the second half of 2027.
Mr Hodder said the latest loss “is a number which is causing me a great deal of concern”.
He said: “Previously, the airport had been making really positive progress towards actually reaching levels of profitability. This year it's taken a significant negative hit, and there are there are a couple of major causes that relate to that.
"A big part of it is coming from charges imposed by the UK government.
“There's a lot of different parts of government where the decisions they're making are having a real negative impact on an airport like LBA.”
"We are a regional airport in the UK. We serve our local community and we're sub-scale.
"We have to grow to be sustainable.
"You just can't deliver profitability from four and a half million passengers with all of the regulatory costs and and all the things that we have to do.
"We have had to expand. That's meant that we've had to borrow funds, interest rates are increasing as well. We've had to borrow to be able to support this investment, but we weren't delivering the sort of facility that this region deserves. So we've had to make that investment.
"We've had to wear those incremental interest expenses, and as we increase the asset base, we've got higher depreciation charges as well which come through.
"It is absolutely still the right thing for us to do, but it is challenging our performance in the short-term until we deliver the expansion and deliver the increased passenger numbers."
LBA’s ownership has recently been taken over by Spanish airport operator Aena and infrastructure investment firm InfraBridge.
Mr Hodder said the new ownership “have been great to work with so far”.
"They are very keen on the expansion to get value from the investment they have made,” he added.