Originally Posted by
SWBKCB
The land at SEN is of course owned by the council - Esken are tenants. Peel own DSA.
This is the key point often overlooked. So long as the council wish it it will remain an airport. The other point often missed is that when Stobart came in the airport was not fit for purpose anymore. They extended the runway, build a new terminal, tower, station, car parking and made endless other expensive improvements. So now we have a small airport that is ready to go but there is an obvious problem that doesn’t look like being solved anytime soon. Right now what airline is going to base aircraft at SEN. With covid, Ukraine, cost of living crisis, Brexit (threw that one in for AP1) and who knows what next will hit the industry.
Post covid demand for flying has been remarkable but as others have pointed out it is still way short of that in 2019. Until demand looks like getting back there I cannot see too much happening at SEN.
But what can Esken do? It has been suggested that they could do without the easyjet flights next year and there is sense in that but if they give up now Esken might as well go and lay down on the middle of the field and allow the circulating vultures to swoop down and start feeding on their collective corpse.