Originally Posted by
G-FORZ
Simple answer... Jet2. Without the number of aircraft they base and the choice of destinations they offer Leeds would have not have had the same success.
CAA's own figures for 2022 there are still 4.8m+ passengrrs from Yorkshire & Humberside (3.7m), North East (0.4m),the
East Midlands (0.7m) & East of England (0.4m) leaking across the Pennines to MAN - they are some of the people who will use DSA if it can get an operator of standing installed to encourage airlines like Easy, Ryanair, TUI, Wizz and who knows maybe even Jet 2 to take some of that market that likes to avoid LBA.
In fairness what you say has merit, indeed it was the reasoning behind building DSA in the first place. How many of those 4.8 million are using one or two specific services though, or are they travelling across to MAN because of the sheer range of destinations on offer there, and those 4.8m are important to the airlines currently flying from MAN because it makes up a useful percentage of the loads across all flights departing MAN?
Think the point was that they couldn’t pinpoint a significant focussed demand for destinations. That is the challenge anyone who operates reopened airport will face. Not to mention that squeeze on slots across the Mediterranean which is the bread and butter of any airport like DSA.