BRS and the public purse
crackling jet,
Bristol and its city region do seem to miss out on all the public gravy train money, both national and European, as the city and its region are perceived to be economically self-sufficient and don't need a helping hand from the public purse. This means that many 'deserving' areas are blessed with public handouts and finish up with better facilities than places like Bristol that have to pay for everything themselves. I've written a lot about this in other arenas but clearly this is not a forum to debate the topic at length.
The £1.5 million from SWRDA was the only amount that the airport received from this QUANGO as far as I can determine, and the RDF money was from the Scottish fund to assist Aberdeen setting up the Bristol route, so Bristol benefited indirectly.
Like you, I much prefer any business to stand on its own feet and public handouts can skew markets in sometimes unexpected directions, with aviation no different. I wasn't in favour of the £1.5 million that BRS received from the SWRDA.
It seems the Coalition will retain some RDA's, reportedly to be renamed and revamped, but only in those areas deemed to have need which doesn't apparently include the South West, albeit many rural areas struggle to keep up with the likes of the Bristol and Exeter regions. So far as the South West airports are concerned the demise of SWRDA would make little difference going forward in view of its previous decision to opt out of supporting them in future.
Ryanair Bergamo route
BleadonHell (it's not really that bad is it? I always thought it was a pleasant sort of place),
I don't know whether the Ryanair Bergamo service has been axed for the coming winter or whether the current timetable is a work in progress. The summer 10 timetable had a number of versions that began in November last year but wasn't finalised for another two or three months with routes and times/days being shuffled almost weekly at times. For example, Rimini was in version 1 before being axed in the subsequent versions only to return in the final one, and it is operating this summer.
If Bergamo is being chopped Milan will have gone from 2 x daily year round until a year or so ago (easyJet 7 x weekly to Malpensa and Ryanair 7 x weekly to Bergamo) to nothing.