You make no mention about the residents and communities that would be affected by increased passenger numbers that are presently protected by the existing planning permission. In your eyes they don’t matter. The planning committee is meant to way up all views and opinions before making a decision about an increase in numbers. The fact that they won’t is well known. You seem to be advocating that any planning permission should be ignored.
What about if a builder got planning permission to build a 1000 houses. You seem to be saying he should then be allowed to ignore that permission and build as many as he likes if the demand is there.
Also it isn’t the council deciding where people can fly to as it remains the airlines that pick and choose where they fly. They can introduce new services by dropping weak destinations. What has happened is that for this year only it stops new airlines coming to Luton. If you consider the fact that for years no new airline has wanted to come to Luton this isn’t a big deal.
Finally you mention more choices for passengers. Luton’s restrictions means that ELAL will fly from Stansted this summer so I assume you are delighted.
LTNman,
I appreciate your point of view, and as a Luton resident I can understand your reticence about further expansion, particularly as LBC seem to have made such a mess of the finances. However, the point I made was that the passenger cap
per se has no effect on the local community. It makes no attempt to curtail freight flights, night flights, executive jet movements, and as such is intellectually bankrupt.
As for El Al, I'm sure they would rather keep all their North London operations together - as a smallish airline they are now serving three London airports - not really sustainable. I also suspect that the reason they moved from Stansted to Luton was the latter's proximity to the large North London Jewish population cluster.
I'm afraid I don't agree that your example of a housing developer is comparable. What would make that comparable would be the planners deciding that only 2000 people could live in the 1000 houses!
Feel free to contradict/comment - I know you have a fair and reasonable view of all matters LTN.