I'm afraid it's all part of a typical cycle of ownership.
LCY opened in 1987, run for a while by Mowlem, they didn't really know how to market it, financally disappointing.
Sold in 1995 to Dermot Desmond for £23m, a fraction of what it cost to build. Ouch ! Poor old Mowlem. But Dermot did know what he was doing, and drove it on to be a great place. I am sure he came and looked at it very often.
Sold in 2006 to GIP etc for £1.2 billion. Wow ! Well done Dermot. But the new owners were remote international financiers whose only idea of development is ".... er ..... reduce costs .....um ..... increase revenue ..... er .... that's it". So our wonderful little airport goes down the skids, owned by those who do not know one end of a plane from the other. All those who were interested in high customer service get marginalised by the money men.
The new consortium will have borrowed the £1.2 billion, so now need to suck maybe £125m or more each year out of the place just to cover the interest, before anything starts. Sometimes I wonder if they expect to get this just from the car parking charges, which appear to have been tripled or more. "It's because we are green". Haha !
Before long the airport will be worth maybe half what the consortium paid for it. Wonder how they will explain that one to their shareholders.