Ownership
There must be a question mark over the expansion plans in their current form, assuming they are eventually approved (by no means a foregone conclusion), given the possibility that MAp may dispose of some of its assets, but MAp is not the only shareholder in the airport. If the airport changes hands a new owner would be sure to have its own ideas, priorities and possibly an emptier (or, with luck, a fuller) pocket.
Ryanair
Ryanair do seem to make contradictory noises at times. From giving the impression there would be no more growth at its UK bases, at least for this year, MOL told a gathering in Manchester a couple of weeks ago that BRS was one of its UK bases that would see further growth in the future.
Four 189-seat aircraft seems a lot to deploy from BRS this winter, given the current economic climate. Last winter the two they had weren't fully utilised with Budapest and Rzeszow temporarily axed in November and December (as these routes were from all FR bases at that time) and Riga dropped in January, February and March.
Out of interest I had a look at the passenger figures for the FR routes from BRS in June, showing destination, total passengers carried, average load and load factor to the nearest whole percentage. I know this doesn't say any more than there were people ready to use these routes, or not as the case may have been, and that we can't judge whether the airline made or lost money on them.
Dublin 23550/137/72%
Belfast City 6022/100/53%
Shannon 6871/115/61%
Knock 3064/90/48%
Riga 2981/165/88%
Poznan 3201/178/94%
Wroclaw 3075/171/90%
Rzeszow 2894/161/85%
Bratislava 2896/161/85%
Porto 2261/141/75%
Budapest 2570/160/84%
Bergamo 7541/126/66%
Girona 9420/157/83%
Eindhoven 2184/84/44%
Bergerac 3182/132/70%
Beziers 4579/133/70%
Pau 1862/116/61%
The Eastern European routes seem to have fared well, very well in one or two cases, and the average loads are higher in general than in June 2008.
Belfast City seems a bit disappointing and they have increase this to double daily for much of the week from this month.
Knock has always seen poor loads except that last August it went up to 83%, otherwise it seems to hover between 40% and 60% but it is kept going at 4 x weekly throughout the year.
Shannon used to be better than this, a lot better at times.
The French routes are better than June 2008.
Eindhoven is a bit of a disaster but I expect there will be a dud or two in the new routes that started this month.
Re your Waterloo comment, I can't say this is my favourite airline and the aviation demise of MOL and his senior cohorts would not concern me, but I think of all the jobs of the employees at risk if it, or any other airline, goes to the wall.