Who Can Afford It?
For convenience I would use NWI every time, and it is a great airport to fly from and to, but the price of such convenience is now so high that I have to look at the Stansted and Luton options - also for their greater range of destinations and numbers of flights. If I was taking a family, say two adults and two children, then for many direct flights I would find NWI unaffordable - and that is without the outrageous additional £3.00 development fee (ADF).
To take an example off the web at today's fares - NWI to CDG on 15 June and returning on 22 June for a family of four - not counting baggage, car parking, environmental offset, speedy boarding and all the other extras. FlyBe from NWI (only one flight) comes to a grand total of £692.84, of which £263.48 is shown as airport charges and taxes. Easyjet from Luton (picking the cheapest flight options) comes to £222.32 of which £122.00 is airport charges and taxes. The Government taxes and CDG are common to both so discounting the airlines fare differences it would appear that NWI is around £140 more expensive for airport operator charges (to which you add the ADF) - is this really the case? If so I suggest that NWI really is trying to price itself out of the market. The difference of nearly £430 for a family of four more than pays the extra fuel cost and driving time to Luton for most people in the NWI catchment area.
Lest you think I have picked the worst example and dates this route and these dates were the only ones that I looked at - these days the choice is anyway very limited. I recognise that some comparisons would be better (or possibly worse) in terms of airline fares, but, presumably, not in terms of taxes and airport charges. I am willing to pay a reasonable premium for the convenience of NWI, and I would love to see the route structure being expanded - but at the moment the opposite is happening and the NWI management seems to be doing little about it - especially in terms of affordability and value for money!
JB