Actually the third runway WAS approved and signed off by the LAST Labour government then caned by Call Me Dave and his cohorts but I digress .
In your last post one could ask so equally why should anyone be forced to travel to Blackpool or Durham to make that short hop to a London Airport !
BTW few in the UK probably make a decisive choice of departure point particularly in the budget sector .
No they will look at many of those consolidators and cheap fare offers .
They may have a time frame to consider such parent and kids holiday periods and unless they are buying a package from the likes of TUI Thomas Cook or Jet2 or a low cost operator, I am afraid they are likely to see many fares from Heathrow or via one of the hubs promoted far more prominently than offerings the from their local airports including Manchester today and as always was.
Sure it’s market forces at work but makes regional airport route development even harder to achieve in the wider economy.
That adage used that if the demand exists from xyz to abc it will be met is fluff at best . I already pointed out that Manchester in particular has won and lost a number of routes for other reasons than simply bums on seats. Still it’s a cut throat commercially competitive industry.
The regional services are far more blitzed by this than any DESIRE to fly via London and significant customers and indeed trade bodies continue to propagate the myth than Heathrow is the only choice !
Still the disrupters are making progress and so much as Heathrow remains a dominant global force, I think the North needs to have an if not equal, a significant counter weight and that has to be Manchester as a split operation each side of the Pennines simply dilutes the offer to the point where it potentially collapses.
Yes it’s a similar if smaller version of the Heathrow viz Gatwick debate. I suppose.
BTW i will register and acknowledge some bias as I actually reside within 8 miles of Heathrow run a business in Kent and South Manchester inport from Mainland EU container loads of parts and see both sides.
I am far from anti additional runway capacity however have great difficulty with the current R3 proposals on costs and benefits as presented, and predicted especially when all the trends and educated analysis and models point to the major growth potential in the industry being elsewhere.
Again I note you tried to ignore the evident case that contrary to one of your arguements key tenants that being of regional services from the likes of Leeds right now already pretty much fail the test .
Again BA and indeed customers from Leeds and surroundings haven’t exactly been a sparkly success story and quite the contrary !
The use it or loss it debate at play !
Equally Liverpool HAS grown ten fold WITHOUT the direct London connection, however that said alternative Hub and Spoke routes when presented in the same market have also failed both KLM and Aer LINGUS couldn’t make Speke work for them.
Enough said this suggests to me at least anecdotally that in fact long haul travellers in these areas are actually rather smaller in number than believed and if so those future feeders will cost the public dear in PSO grants.