Paarmo, Teesside is a dump. Drive up or down the A19 and anyone who isn't from Teesside will be appalled at the blight on an otherwise attractive landscape.
The motorways in Europe are a joy compared to the UK. Pay as you go, vote with your feet and you find generally under utilised roads, in a good state of maintenance at a price admittedly but take Belgium and Netherlands with almost completely lit road networks? Stopping for 30 seconds to pay is an easy way to go compared to the appalling roadworks generally found in the UK.
I am as proud of the UK as any man and I am not running down the UK. Just trying to get you to see that MME is not going to compete (as it never really has in modern times) with any of the other airports neighbouring.
Whatever the management are paid they have limited options in this current economic climate, the infrastructure and the desire of locals and incomers to use the facilities.
The North East has about the worst unemployment in the UK and Teesside is about the worst in the region. There is neither the commercial case nor the willing passengers if there was to utilise the airport on any grand scale.
MME would be better off delivering charters, freight and GA than kidding itself and its users that it is an International Airport in any great sense of the word. The timetable they published is a joke, period.
I am very proud of our region and my country and it has jack to do with that. It has everything to do with deluding anyone that it can be something grand.
Reality is that the Metro may never happen, even if it does it will make no difference. The branding won't matter too much because in the final analysis not enough people want to fly to it or from it. Supply and demand.