Skyman, Thirty to fourty years ago the road links to both airports were fairly similar.
. "They were" & "they were not", depending on how you looked at it. I made my first trip from MME in 1966? to PMI on a BKS Britannia & have witnessed the development / progress (or not) over the years as much as anyone. Right from the start everything was lagging behind NCL, be it size of terminal facilities, access, or services offered. Even on route duplication such as LHR then NCL offered that bit more & really nothing much has changed in 43 years other than the scale of operations & hence the now much larger gap. Most successful business are built by charismatic people with a passion, you are correct that NCL had Denyer , they were also fundamentally much more successful in marketing their product be it to punters or investors. MME really didn't loose it's ex RAF image for more than 20 years & I don't think that did them any good at at all. Sentiment & business do not go well together & even the placing of the Lightning near the terminal for my part only served to hammer home the wrong image. Who knows as to what the future holds but DTV's will require major investment without the guarantee of short or even medium term returns & this in the current ecconomic climate is very unlikely.