mmeman Having read your post you certainly must have thought long & hard just to raise the points raised, but really on consideration they appear less valid the more they are read. Loco operations put pressure on any airports profitablity, the trade off is to offset as much off the pax revenue off by using the increased pax volume or 'foot fall' to their advantage in airport concessions, be it food or retail. This is much harder to address at DTV as the volumes are insufficient & the concessions limited & I can't see much evidence that RYR or GSM are prepared to add much. On the other side the airports fixed costs, ATC,Fire, Security etc.will be considerable. It is all a vicious circle particularly in an uncertain environment. So what is Peel to do ? there are clearly several options, a) plod on & hope that slowly over a number of years that things will improve with the addition of limited investment?,b) Take a more risky strategy & raise large amounts of funding & hope that the 'virtuous circle' can be broken to the extent that the increased revenue obtained more than covers the cost of the additional funding c) do very little, making as little investment as possible without compromising current service levels, keeping their options open d) Adopt a strategy consistent with the ultimate disposal of their investment in DTV. My money is on either a) or c) but clearly both options give Peel more freedom to change their strategy.
