LEEDS - 4

[BKS Air Transport]

The only reason why Leeds is not a much bigger player in today's airport market is because of poor decisions in the past. I guess that when 14/32 (or 15/33) was planned they had one eye on the Brabazon report, which envisaged domestic and short haul traffic being handled by tubo-props. But with the runway not long in service, Court-line etc were offering package holidays using 1-11s from other regional airports which seemed to have long enough runways already. When it was finally decided that a longer runway was needed, a fresh planning application was required and as we all know this was turned down. This was the time when it might have been possible to start from afresh at a different site. A report 'An Airport for Yorkshire' was published, but no proposals worthy of the major funding required came out of it.

So eventually Yeadon got the longer runway it deserved, but even then the planners tied a hand behind the airport's back with the rigid night time curfew. In the meantime, people just became used to travelling to Manchester, and accepted it as one of those things.

The airport is now starting to make up for lost time, in many ways thanks to Jet2, and it can go much further. People are increasingly now breaking the Manchester habit and insisting on flying from Leeds. I know a number of people who will interline at Heathrow rather than go to Manchester for a direct flight.

As long as basic requirements are met, airport success does not depend on an elaborate infrastructure but on the city or cities that it serves. Leeds is one of the UK's biggest cities, far larger than Bristol, Cardiff, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Newcastle, etc. and a major centre for financial and legal services. This is why it's airport will grow, and arguments about quality of runway, state of the terminal and weather are peripheral. Do you think that airline management base their decisions on what crew think about flying there? Bridgepoint know exactly what they have bought into. It is the converse of this argument that explains why a certain airport with it's lengthy runway can only manage IT flights, and only ever will.