madbadrob said about LBA (+ HUY)
"Correct me if I am wrong but they are both out of the way and poorly served by public Transport"
Unlike DSA, LBA is not in the country. It is situated within the city of Leeds boundary, and on the edge of the city of Bradford. There are no motorways to the door, but, there are public " A" roads that actually lead you to it, not farm tracks.There are regular bus services to Leeds, Bradford and Harrogate, and two railway stations serving two separate lines close by. 2.6 million passengers did manage to find their way to use LBA this year, 3 million expected next year. Approx 12-15% increase in pax each month this year, and that is since the start of DSA flights.
So struggling to find passengers I find hard to believe. Struggling to park all the aircraft, yes, and where to put the passengers through, yes I agree that the terminal is under pressure several times throughout the day, within a building that does need the injection of some private money spending on it.
With ref to "kicking out the University flight" ?. Not sure what you mean there. If you mean the UAS, then they left about 1959, when the tiger moths re-located to RAF Church Fenton, or could even have been RAF Finningley!.
If you mean something else, I'm not aware of anyone being kicked out, however, some of the aero clubs are finding difficulty in getting runway time due busy periods of schedule movements. But at the end of the day, what brings in the money? A handful of cessnaa doing circuits on sunny days or 50 to a hundred 100 scheduled airliners full of passengers eager to spend their money in the terminal and car parks, every day of the year.
DSA is a lovely airport indeed, with an excellent terminal, and has started with good numbers. Don't be surprised though if the pax figures take a dip each month as the anniversary of a year passes by. We appear to be seeing already a reduction in TOM flights for 2006, which so far has been DSA's bread and butter business. As was mentioned before, another carrier or carriers need to be found quickly to keep the momentum going on an upward trend, filling the void otherwise DSA will just become a CAA statistic, another regional airport, carrying about 650,000 to 1,000,000 pax a year, on par with Norwich, Exeter, Teesside and Humberside. Realistically that is all it can be. The likes of Cathay, Qantas, Singapore, Virgin, American, Emirates, PIA are not going to give DSA a second look. Manchester, like it or not, is the "local" airport for worldwide connections. Without feeder domestic and local internationals to connect with them, it would rely on thousands of locals needing to travel to Singapore on a regular basis, or people in Bangkok coming to Doncaster. and I don't think that's going to happen even if/when Doncaster Rovers beat Arsenal!
The area is well served to the North, LBA, the South NEMA, the West MAN and the East HUY. The airport (DSA) will have to do a lot more if it wants to make serious inroads into those other airports. However, offering what it does at the moment is possibly what it can reasonably justify and sustain for the future with a few extra flights here and there.
Therefore, it is just possible that DSA has reached its capacity as a regional airport so soon after it opened.