Stansted Airport is calling on businesses from across the East of England to work together to help attract direct long-haul services to the airport.

The airport plans to contact more than 300 of the region’s top companies to develop a detailed picture of their travel requirements which will provide a base of evidence to show airlines the strong demand for business travel within the region and the opportunities that exist to serve these routes from Stansted.

The study will focus on companies that use long-haul air links but which currently have to travel from other London airports.

More than 46million journeys are made each year by people living within Stansted’s catchment but only 12m of those flights are actually from the airport itself. Of the remaining 34m flights, around 6m involving flying long-haul to and from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australasia, and 4.6m passengers take flights to and from North America.

Andrew Harrison, Stansted’s managing director, said: “Businesses tell us again and again that they want Stansted to offer a network of long-haul routes that will connect them with their key customers and markets.

“Stansted serves an economic region that is strong and growing, reflecting the competitiveness of the businesses located here. We need to demonstrate this strength of demand to airlines who are not currently serving Stansted.

“When airlines assess the market for a new route, specific information about the potential customer base is extremely valuable. Stansted should be towards the top of many airlines’ lists for new services and we want to make sure they have detailed information on their potential customers to help them make that decision.

“This study will pinpoint the opportunities for airlines to serve long-haul demand directly from the areas closest to Stansted. Armed with this information, we can work with airlines to bring these services here.

“So we’re calling on businesses in the region to work with us to share information about where they fly to because, together with our £80m investment programme to transform the terminal, this really will make the difference in bringing long-haul services to Stansted.”

Greg Clark, chairman of the London Stansted Cambridge Consortium, said: “The London-Stansted-Cambridge corridor is poised for unprecedented growth over the next decade.

“The mix of highly clustered growth sectors such as life sciences, hi-tech and clean energy desperately need international connectivity to key markets in North America and Asia in order to flourish and compete with global rivals. I urge businesses in the Corridor and the wider region to speak up and help the new team at Stansted Airport build a strong business case to make long-haul destinations a reality from Stansted.”