Originally Posted by
Asturias56
LCC's fill the car parks, the bars and the duty free's - that's where the money is made by the airport owners
and a lot of LCC traffic means you can run a full revenue generating operation almost 24/7 - people sitting there from 04:00 waiting for the curfew to end at 06:00 for example.
A few LCC flights isn't nearly as useful- see Doncaster
Although I agree with most of your comments in the above post. (Must be a first for me) There's one thing I don't entirely agree with.
Doncaster isn't really a good example is it. At the end they only had TUI and before that Wizz as well. The airport was very reliant on LCCs and IT flights. SOU currently has eight airlines serving the airport, of which one is only an LCC. SOU is also a very important airport within the UK domestic scene whereas Doncaster wasn't. Two totally different airports serving totally different markets. If SOU had the same runway length and terminal size as Doncaster, it would without doubt be a far busier airport than it currently is, with or without a based LCC.