Originally Posted by
jethro15
Interesting. However, whilst EMA has lost it's passenger income to cargo, BHX gave EMA the opportunity to revive until a certain point. BHX is passenger oriented, EMA is now freight. oriented
BHX can accommodate the occasional freight operation without issues. The times of comparing BHX with EMA were lost when British Midland were allowed to collapse!
Badly phrased by me. What I meant was that if there was no EMA then BHX would be a larger airport, much larger in passenger number terms than, say BRS. That said of course there had long been an East Midlands airport in Burnaston but it wasn't suitable for the larger aircraft such as the Argonaut and later the Viscount that were the catalyst for the evolution of Derby Aviation into BMA. I wonder what might have happened had EMA not been opened in the mid 1960s. Would British Midland have relocated to BHX, or perhaps not even have developed into the carrier it became. That is more for a historical thread!
As you say, any direct competition for passenger routes between the two airports has diminished. EMA is now principally a first class cargo orientated airport primarily, though 4m plus PAX p/a is hardly a pittance.