Without the full story it's difficult to know what the motive is of any airline. For example, we don't know what kind of deals the airport is offering to existing airlines that fly from the airport, as well as trying to attract new airlines.
EasyJet made it perfectly clear in their annual report last year that they will continue to drop services from airports where the charges are too high for them to effectively operate there. That's why Zuerich was closed, and perhaps this is the reason why NEMA hasn't seen any decent expansion since 2003, because there hasn't been a good enough incentive for them to stay. I'm sure that the top dogs at NEMA are sweating a bit now that EZY have announced the new GVA/DSA route, and hoping that it won't be the start of a major expansion, what with it being just 50 minutes up the road.
Ryanair has a good infrastructure at the airport. Their pilot training base is here, and at least once a week they send a new Boeing 737-800 to the airport for a few hours to do circuit training and touch & goes. Perhaps the success of Ryanair's other routes will also be a key for them to expand from here. Flights always seem quite popular, although I have no idea how the yields are. Again, expansion from FR will only come if the airport is able to provide a good enough deal for them.
bmibaby & bmi is an odd combination. EMA is the nearest airport to the HQ of the companies, and yet it seems to be one of the smallest bases. For such a small base, I've been sceptical of having two separate brands which is quite confusing. I think with no real competition from EasyJet that bmibaby has plenty of room to take back some of the routes that they've dropped, but whether MME & BHX are offering better incentives to expand from there will decide whether we'll ever see as many based aircraft as we did in 2003 when I believe there were eight based B737s. EMA has lost out on other bmi-related airlines from flying to the airport which I see as a real shame. When germanwings announced they'd be flying to the midlands from their Cologne base I was sure it would be EMA, and yet they chose BHX. Something isn't right when airlines are choosing other bases over a bmi "hub" or what American airlines might call a "focus city."
bmi's old FRA route which was served in 2001 was only unsuccessful because it was one flight in the mid-afternoon. This didn't leave good enough connections or the ability for businessmen to go out to Frankfurt and back as they could with BA or LH from BHX. Rumours circulated that the route was dropped because of Lufthansa being unhappy with competition for their BHX route, but I'm sure it was simply a slot issue. Perhaps LH might want to step into EMA, as we have no hub carrier!
Rumours were circulating that Air Southwest might be coming to the airport, but I'm not sure if there would be a market for such services. Mind you, WW's BHX/NQY service appears to be very popular.
Now that MyTravelLite is closing down at the end of the season as it's merged back into MyTravel Airways I think we're really going to see some stability come into the Midlands market, as airlines choose whether they want to stay, and if so, doing what ...
