This was taken from LADACAN. Just about sums it up really........
Indeed it does; however, the culprit is not LLAO nor ACDL but Luton Borough Council (LBC), and it's both inaccurate and unfair for LADACAN or anyone else to castigate LLAO over this delay.
LBC seems completely incapable of understanding the need for a viable pay-back period in return for investing the large amount of cash required to develop the existing site (which is LBC's preferred option and the only option that it will support - it was never LLAO's choice).
Years of under-investment by the Town Hall had resulted in an airport that desperately needed a vast amount of investment just to bring it up to a 1990 standard; to keep pace with demand and develop it further, even to a much reduced passenger capacity i.e. well below the 30M envisaged in Project 2030 needs even more cash and no commercial company is going to spend the amounts needed unless it can generate an acceptable return on its investment.
It should be remembered that when the 30-year Concession was originally put out to tender, at least one very experienced potential taker - Frankfurt Airport Authority - having done its 'due dilligence' concluded that the investment required was so great that the 30 years available combined with the fees per passenger payable to LBC made the project a totally unviable commercial deal.
The 2015 date interestingly, coincides with the 'break clause' in the Concession Agreement and whilst this could of course, be mere coincidence, then again...
