What a depressing thread this is.....
The runway at BRS has been a problem for as long as I can remember, for one reason or another (obstructions, slopes, and now surface). I don't know why the two aircraft ran off recently but they are not the first by a long way. I would want a very careful investigation before even thinking of blaming the operating crew.
Lack of proper investment and maintainance is fairly clearly the primary cause, and this is a characteristic of any airport owner who invested simply to turn as big a profit as possible as quickly as possible. Nothing wrong with that, just as long as there is a pro-active regulator ready, willing and able to threaten closure, and do it if nothing happens, the moment that things slip.
Step forward the CAA.........ah well, perhaps not.
The problem is that most UK airports are now owned by investors who have one sole purpose, and that's an exit within 5-10 years with the highest achievable pay-off. You don't get that by investing in long term safety improvements, or by reducing profits by spending more than a bare minimum on maintenance. With a supine and compliant regulator, we have not seen the last accident due to airport inadequacies.
Could Exeter be the next place where things start to go wrong? LCY and Balfour Beatty are not there other than to maximise return on capital as quickly as possible, ie before demand is constrained and reduced by environmental measures and/or terrorism.
The bleats about passenger attitudes from ground staff are equally depressing, because they reveal the attitudes of these staff towards their customers. Clearly the customers were treated like sheep in the case of diversions from BRS and herded from place to place, with rude staff and little information. I now fly on business every few weeks on European services , LCC and others, and having been in the airline and airport industry for 35 years I find the behaviour of ground passenger service staff is now almost universally appalling, particularly in the UK. Easyjet's treatment of boarding passengers at the gate is especially oppressive, offensive and demeaning, whether or not it is Easyjet or an agent for Easyjet. (LPL and PMI, recently, to name but two stations of many).
Unless the culture of contempt for the customer that is now the norm, not only with LCCs, is eradicated, the industry may well find that even British passengers become less tolerant and more often react violently to the treatment that is meted out to them. It is condescending rubbish to assume that they don't understand or tolerate safety issues. They do; what they object to is being treated like idiots, often by people who are themselves clearly untrained, incompetent, unintelligent, and totally unable to handle a situation calling for initiative and ability, such as a diversion. I refer to the majority of passenger service ground staff at most airports, from management downwards.