Robin Hood Airport will open on the 16th March 2005.
Currently, the TUI group comprising Britannia Airways and the low cost Thomsonfly.com will have a total of 5 based aircraft between them.
THe airport is, I beleive in discussions with a number of airlines and it's my guess that there will be more scheduled services announced later this year, the TUI announcement was very early, usually airlines announce around 2-3 months in advance, so end of the year, early next seems logical to me.
Dragonair have a receiving depot at Doncaster. Contrary to the earlier post, they have such facilities all over the county, otherwise you would end up with thousands of little ford transit vans descending on manchester airport and Stansted every day to feed the flights. Freight is collected at various locations throughout the UK and trunked into the aircraft departure airport. This is not uncommon, contrary to our friends earlier comment.
Early indications for sales from the airport are very positive and this will line the aiport up well for the future. It is not going to happen overnight, and my guess, for what it;s worth would be that 2006 will see a major step change from 2005, with 2005 being the year the airport opens, gets itself settled down and bedded in for growth.
DSA is an exciting opportunity for aviation in this country, and a rare opportunity at that, lets hope all the cynics out there welcome it and we can, for at least once on this site, be spared the incessent bashing that good news usually receives.