Originally Posted by
rpmac
Whilst I am sympathetic to Bristol and their desire to grow beyond 10million per year is there not a case of slowing down the bigger airports such as BRS and MAN, even EDI so that the smaller airports can grow and provide better for their catchment area. If it becomes that little bit more difficult to find a flight from a larger airport this might encourage growth at smaller airports. This should result in less car journeys and at the same time spread the load of noise pollution allowing residents of the larger airports to take less of the strain. Local businesses such as hotels should also benefit if smaller airports can grow. Of course long haul from the bigger airports will continue to be the norm but maybe the smaller airports could be encouraged to have more European flights, eg CPH, ZUR, MAD etc which benefit business travellers both European and UK. As an example Lufthansa might want to expand Manchester services but if this was restricted they may be prompted to start a LBA route thereby reducing by a small margin the number of people travelling over the M62 from West Yorkshire. The same might be said of LPL, NCL , EMA, etc. all of whom lose out to MAN which continues to grow.
For various reasons LH might be very reluctant to do as you suggest. Here are a few:-
1. Frequency of service. Business passengers demand multi-daily services, and the LH hub needs 3 services minimum per day to offer sufficient connectivity. This may not be realistic from smaller airports.
2. Better to add seats to existing routes - LH, for example would rather first add more seats to existing capacity before opening up new routes.
3. The would be an additional cost to doing so, new routes mean more operating cost, and of course the costs of developing the route
4. Environmental. All businesses today want to promote green credentials. Whilst offering services from a secondary airport may reduce emissions from surface transport, additional flights (one assumes in the LH scenario they aren't going to reduce frequency from MAN) will generate more CO2 and other gases.
Local businesses would surely like to see services from their local airport, in fact chambers of commerce will often lobby for them. Sadly, when it comes to the crunch, there isn't the business class take up and they are often viewed an nonviable, or as with BRS and BHX to Newark, proved to be so. Businesses often say one thing and do another!