As I said I wish them success as I have friends there who have taken a gamble to work for the enterprise. If Cov can be turned into a viable low cost hub then thats grand - its a shorter commute than at present for me.
But.
You simply cannot cannot put a positive spin on the current situation.
6 weeks from launch and:
You have no terminal, no check in, no car park, no baggage handling.
No signs for pax to follow, no branding on the site, no cash machine, no coffee shop, no WHSmiths, no Bureau de Change.
You do have the local councillors vowing to close you down, the planning department refusing your terminal plans and Stop notices being slapped on your current portacabins.
And this is being organised by a mighty Teutonic company worth billions?! Should've hired Heath Robinson.
Forget about pilots, industry people, people who read PPRuNe and people who live in Coventry - NOBODY knows you can go on holiday from Coventry airport! I bet less than 5% of the population of the Midlands even knows that there is an airport there...
Hell, - Buzz struggled for years to get anybody to notice them and that was out of Stansted 'the low cost airlines airport'.
TompkinsBeetle will have to spend 10's of millions to make enough people aware of the product. This is doable.
But not if the product involves parking on Coventry High St and catching the number 82x Bus to portacabin 52f round the back of Hangar 12 - just past the DC3's....
However, on the bright side, this does put them leagues ahead of Now as they do actually have crews, aircraft, sales and finance in place.
This'll make an interesting book if it ever works - thats for sure.
WWW
ps Like the MYT angle - but surely not?