At a recent LBA consultative committee meeting, the situation with Wizz was discussed. They have said that even when DSA was open, the vast majority of the passengers using their services had O&D in West Yorkshire, and they have seen high profitable load factors since moving to LBA. They have said they will not return to DSA in any scenario should the airport reopen.
It was also said that several airports touted for the Wizz business, including one to the North East of LBA (presumably Teesside) which offered to pay them to fly from there, however they chose LBA due to access to the market.
And yet Wizz have only 2 arrivals today and none tomorrow at LBA, not the same operation they had at DSA. Perhaps they have taken the opportunity to consolidate flights between the airports they can operate from.
Times have changed since DSA originally opened. The prospect of Airtours never materialised but they didn’t survive anyway, Thompson Fly offered a low cost opportunity only to die in favour of IT operations, but alone Thompson/ TUI didn’t base the numbers needed, Ryanair played DSA against LBA and LBA won, Easyjet offered City flights to an immature market on W patterns with bad timings and worst of all an up and coming low cost airline chose LBA as a base (and let’s face it without Jet2 LBA would be in trouble).
Had the realisation that 4 based aircraft was never going to bring in the profitable pax numbers hit home in 2008 then DSA might have been in a different situation.
The market that brings volume revenue to the regional airports (med flights) has shrunk in terms of operators who still exist. If one of the only players DSA did have on their side will not return then there is little chance of DSA bringing in the 4 million pax needed to achieve profitable operation.