I hear a lot of rumours about DTV being the next Sheffield and granted with all of the business park development plans going ahead it could look that way on the face of it, but the Southside Development has been rumbling on for years, in fact i did an indepth study on it for a project at my Sixth Form College ( some 9-10 years ago) and had many interviews and meetings with airport management at the time, so this is not a new thing for Peel.
In addition the land around the airport building and airside isnt really being used for anything so i can see the reason behind developing a business park, but would Peel really go to the effort of spending some £3M improving airport lighting out on the taxiways/runways just to throw those of us on PPRune off the scent and a year down the line close the airport....i doubt it at all.
You also have to remember that whilst Peel own 75% the rest is owned by local councils and whilst not in the majority, if Peel want to shut down and turn it into one big business park who is it they need building permissions from - initially or totally its the councils, so they hold a bigger key to this than just Peel.
Finally there seems to be a lot of people saying everyone is going to pull out, i cant see KLM going at all and if the charters are reducing as is planned for next year why would Globespan follow suit, they would have a near monopoly on the bucket and spade routes, if anything it should strengthen the ties.... the people in the catchment area arent suddenly going to stop going abroad nor will they all travel to NCL/Leeds/Manchester just because they like the commute to the airport if services are/were on offer at MME at the right times and price.
I think someone mentioned a while ago that 70-100 seaters are the way to go to expand the scheduled side, whilst i appreciate Flybe (obvious choice) are based at NCL and LBA to a degree, i cant see why airport and the airline havent come up with a plan for something to go from MME.
On the rumour of Wizz going, someone has said on the Wizz thread in response to DTVAirport's comments (also made in this thread) that an aircraft isnt going from WAW and Wizz are always late to load their schedules. If the pax are using it i cant see it going, if they arent then fine but until their winter schedule is up lets wait and see.