As was said at the time of the Air Transport White paper, and resolutely denied by BAA and their pet monkey the Dept for Transport (Alistair Darling i/c), Stansted has always been, and still is a commercial turkey.
Its only attraction for airlines is very low charges, and so inevitably it has become dominated by LCC's, or rather dominated by 1 LCC, to wit, Ryanair. Retail revenues are only good if numbers are kept high. Hmmm, anyone forecasting a bit of a slump there?
Those low charges must either remain low to keep airlines using it, or if they are raised the main user will go away. It cannot be cross-subsidised legally from LHR, and under separate ownership that possibility totally disappears.
For these reasons its expansion project, especially at BAA's grossly inflated costs, has always been and remains totally unbankable. Indeed, the risk that it can never make a fair return on capital is so high that such a failure is a racing certainty.
Unusually for this Government it has not - yet - meekly offered to fill the gap with taxpayers' funds, although it probably will, eventually.
I'm not surprised the Spaniards want to get out.