Originally Posted by
God_of_Fire
Hopefully the current crisis will lead the owners of BHX to reassess their pricing structure and reduce their hefty passenger fees. It's been too expensive an airport to sustain a decent low cost scheduled operation for the past twenty years. The councillors I charge think that BHX should be on a par with MAN but it's not.
With respect, unless you're on the inside, then all you know is what the tariff is. What you don't know, unless of course you're in the inside and from the perspective of a carrier looking to open services to BHX is what the actual rate offer is, following the usual commercial negotiations.
I honestly don't believe that BHX could attract that much more regular business if the published rates were 50% of Manchester's, where BHX might score in such a scenario could be on ad hoc movements - charters, both passenger and freight, and of course diversions which, thanks to modern technology are not such a factor as they were say, 30 years ago. The main drivers for new services are going to be commercial viability from a yield standpoint, and we already know that BHX has never been able to sustain enough font end traffic even to encourage Emirates or a transatlantic carrier to successfully offer a first class product.
Kicking the airport over it's fees misses the point. That being the wealth of the region it serves, and it's proximity to Manchester and the London airports, not to mention the dilution of passenger demand by having two passenger airports within 80km of each other. The current crisis and it's aftermath may actually encourage airport businesses to play hardball with those carriers paying uneconomic rates so that they can maximise revenue and at the same time reduce staffing numbers - working smart rather than hard, or in other terms, stop being busy fools.