Originally Posted by
OzzyOzBorn
Because MAG's airports are not interchangeable. Each offers a unique business proposition based upon its geography. Stansted best serves the South-East. East Midlands best serves ... err, the East Midlands and the M1 corridor.
Rather, you should ask why did they wilfully run down the perfectly good cargo operation which thrived at MAN as recently as 2008. There are people who leave behind a rich legacy in business. And there are others who leave disaster like this in their wake. Business mistakes need to be acknowledged with honesty and transparency. Then corrected. Defending failed strategy with religious zeal until your market share is decimated generally doesn't work out well from a business perspective.
We are clearly looking at this from a different perspective. I appreciate that cargo provides variety on the airfield at all hours of the day and night and that in the past there was a lot of dedicated cargo traffic. But you are revising history. Prior to COVID-19 dedicated fright was in decline, as were yields. Dedicated freighters were being retired because the modern wide-bodied aircraft like the 77W and A350, even the 787 have huge cargo ability, even with heavy passenger loads, the ME3 have flooded the market. MAN's cargo figures support that.
You mention 2008, MAN handled 141,000 tonnes. In 2018 Man handled was 114,000 tonnes, roughly 20% decrease, hardly a collapse and a good performance when looking at tother UK airports.
https://www.airportwatch.org.uk/air-freight/
LHR, EMA and STN have seen increases of between 15 and 20% in that decade and MAG has a net growth of 73 tonnes. What I am saying is that the cargo market has fundamentally changed, rather than mismanagement MAN have actually grown their business, albeit via different airports which have a better geographical location to feed to/from the ground-based logistics infrastructure.
I agree that cargo volume has collapsed and MAN could probably have taken more cargo. No doubt it would have done if EMA and STN had been overrun, but the air fright industry did the logical thing - they added capacity to ports they already serve. Look at it another way. Why do TK fly multiple times a day from and not add an LPL and an LBA instead?