Originally Posted by
ATNotts
There isn't an economic payback, there would however be an enormous regional political willy to wave.
If there was a massive inbound business and / or tourist market to serve the equation might be different. If EMA didn't exist then a large cargo / logistics hub might also provide a good economic case, but it does and there isn't.
It is overwhelmingly being driven by local pride, totally understandable as it is quite right that South Yorkshire Urban Area is currently one of the largest ‘city regions’ in Europe without an airport. The question is to what cost should the local authority(s) pump into it when considering the requirement to meet other obligations?
It’s never going to be profitable in a micro economic sense - they are taking a wider regional economic benefit stance to pursue it. So what will the net benefit be? I would argue that if it is to only handle outbound holiday flights then not that much at all, but if they can get scheduled carriers in with daily flights that offer hub connectivity…. I remain highly sceptical but then it’s not my money they are proposing to spend.
Judging by comments from locals that want it reopening, their argument for it is based on their ability to get to it within 30 minutes, but also the superior service levels when using it, something I can vouch for myself. Inevitably though, the more successful these places become the less user friendly they are - possible exception being LPL.
Agree 100% about freight, it would just take the business that EMA isn’t all that bothered about (which is what it did before it closed), I don’t think a proposal to build a speculative freight integrator facility would get past the board of any infrastructure/hedgefund/equity investment group based on the fact that EMA has all that in abundance and has the necessary agreements in place with the associated long term, long developed agreements with the operators.
Think this wider agreement may still need a great deal of good will from Peel to make it a viable proposal to any private sector airport operator, on top of the subsidies on offer by CDC. Reopening is still far from certain. Peel apparently have the SOBC and prospectus, what may that tell then that they don’t already know?