Originally Posted by
eye2eye5
But surely stand space is limited at any airport. MAN is rather hemmed in by motorways and housing estates, with a rather hostile Council on another border and the now disposed of Airport City on another.There are possibilities- build over the AVP, demolish the hangars - to build more remote stands and those options would not be too expensive. Part of your answer, however, may lie in the deployment of larger aircraft. Encourage EZY to base A321 rather than A319. Price out ATR and 145. The latter may be sacrilege to domestic connection supporters, but times have changed.
God no, most airports have way more space than they need because we have too many airports and a fragmented incoherent transport infrastructure. MAN and LGW have one thing in common in that at some times of the day, even in peak summer, they're ghost towns. LHR is unique in that it's just flat out stacked but even they have T4 and tumbleweed at times. MAN has an enormous based fleet that overnights and all leaves at the same time and then does the same on return. It's not beyond the wit of man for Ryanair and easyJet to operate more of their MAN operation from overseas bases, leaving TUI and Jet2 stuck in the "all aboard at the crack of dawn" model. Many of the stands needed for overnights are empty most of the rest of the day.
As for "pricing out propellers", that would show that they have no ambition to be any sort of hub with feed, which actually might make some commercial sense if just one more Spanish bound A320 is all they care about.
Originally Posted by
eye2eye5
but sometimes hard edged business must over ride feelings.
Worth looking at how wrong the Beeching cuts to railway infrastructure were in the longer term and comparing the long term legacy of Concorde where Toulouse is a world leading industrial site and Filton is building some delightful housing..... Hard edged businesses only think Year on Year, national infrastructure needs a longer lens an obvious weakness of Modern Britain PLC.