How do you make a small profit in the airline business? - Start off with a very big one.
So said Sir Freddie Laker, (one of the few things he and Lord King agreed upon).
All this talk of "investing £100K each" in a new airline to operate from MSE is a tad optomistic and even naieve, even if you had 10 people foolish enough to part with that sort of cash (which you wouldn't), you'd run out of money within a month.
A service airport for the 2012 Olympics? Dream on!
MSE barely has sufficiant terminal facilities for current trade, there's no Government subsidy available for developing airports for the 2012 Olympics, nor is private cash likely to be forthcoming.
If you assume that someone was daft enough to operate into MSE for 2012, how would the passengers get to the Olympic site? The existing transport infrastucture is completely inadequate, and like the airport investment, no one in their right mind is going to invest for a one off event which will show no return afterwards.
Someone mentioned Robin Hood - there's a significant difference there - Robin Hood is owned and operated by a company with far greater business skills than Intratril.
Peel saw the opportunity, bought the site, went out and got the best part of £80m of European money, put in a significant wedge of their own cash in and have come up with an airport which in the long term, will make money for the investors.
They face significant competition from other regional airports but still are making signifcant progress, MSE has, in theory a much larger passenger catchment area, but has failed to capitalise upon it's opportunities.
The
way MSE will see scheduled passenger services run on a long term basis is by attracting an existing operator who has the fleet and marketing nous to make it work and that assumes that the airport company has a marketing team in place who can go out and attract that sort of trade - hopefully recent changes will make that possible, but I do wonder.