Air Travel
When you start to thing about the long term future of Airports, Rail travel will have a major inpact on short haul with the high speed lines being built over Europe. A lot of this traffic will move to rail over the next 5 to 20 years I am sure as air travel will be more expensive and higher taxed.
As for Manston it's not all about catchment area, Passengers travel 100's of miles to get to Heathrow, Gatwick to get the flight to the place they want .
I find Heathrow is a nightmare to get to, to get in, to get out.
Stanstead and Luton made it work by offering the right product.
Stanstead had a rail link built.
Manston needs to offer the right product and service at the right price, for passenger or freight. Being a small airport overheads are a lot less and a better service can be offered.
I live close to the flight path for runway 10 and noticed a lot more large jets landing in the last few weeks.
I think the new owners are in it to make money, and they are investing in the airports infrastucture.
We will have to wait and see, past performance is not a guide to the future as any investor knows.