There is no doubt that BRS would not have developed as spectacularly as it has in the ownership of the local authority.
The City Council cleverly (not a word normally associated with Bristol City Council) retained a 49% holding when they sold the majority share to FirstGroup plc in 1997. This enabled the new terminal to go ahead. By 2001 they were ready to sell out completely and the airport's value was around £200 million.
At that time First Group sold out as well and a company (Tidefast) was formed to purchase the airport on behalf of the Australian Macquarie Bank and Cintra (a subsidiary of the Spanish Ferrovial company). This is still the situation albeit internal manoeuvrings in the two groups means that the Macquarie half is now owned by Macquarie Airports and the Spanish half by Ferrovial Aeropuertos.
As well as Bristol Macquarie has interests in airports at Sydney, Brussels, Rome and Birmingham. However, only at Sydney are they involved with Ferrovial and here the Spanish company has only a minority holding.
So for Macquarie and Ferrovial to purchase EXT as equal partners (as they run BRS) would mean only the two west country airports would be owned in this way.
I think that a move from local authority ownership should be good news for EXT. A new terminal would certainly be an entirely realistic proposition.
I think that comparisons between the EXT of now and the BRS of yesteryear have some validity, but EXT will never have anything like the catchment area nor such a big mix of lucrative business and leisure travellers, unless there is mass displacement of the population of the UK.
However, now that Flybe has recognised the airport's merits it has come along in leaps and bounds and there must be more to come.
A joint owner for both EXT and BRS would certainly throw up some interesting scenarios as to how the airports might be run. Would the owners seek to run them as competitors or as complements, for instance?