As Onion points out, criticism of our local airport is sometimes hard to swallow, sometimes unjustified, and sometimes made by people from ‘up the road’ and elsewhere with an axe to grind for no good reason. However, like Carbheathot, I also believe Skyman makes a valid point in his post, whatever the reasons.
I work in a large office in Darlington with colleagues across all age groups, living in a wide cross section of locations throughout the north east, yet the total lack of knowledge as to where they think they can, or can’t, fly to from MME is staggering. They can quote me train times and destinations, bus routes and times, which road to take to get me to wherever. Any mention of flight destinations, holidays, etc. however and it’s always Newcastle virtually every time, never MME. You have to seriously ask why this continues to happen, when there’s an airport on their doorstep.
I’ve lived in this area all my life, and despite wanting MME to be a successful airport, I’ve seen nothing positive to show that management, either past or present, has the necessary drive, vision or the marketing strategy to take it beyond being anything other than a small local airport. I appreciate that major developments such as those proposed don’t happen overnight, but I’m also old enough to remember MME opening as a civil airport over 40 years ago. After all those years it still provides potential customers in this part of the world with an abysmal lack of services, still retains and uses many of its previous military buildings, and still clings onto a general feel of something from the 1960’s that’s never quite got started. It will continue to do so, because nobody, including the local media, appears to question publicly how or why this situation is allowed to continue year after year.
When Bmibaby pulled out, GSM were a welcome replacement for the usual bucket and spade routes, but I always get the impression that MME management then sits back and says ‘that’s a job well done, we can all go to sleep as there’s nothing for us to do for a year or so until another disaster looms large on the horizon’.