Ah how wonderful management spin is - the reality being that EMA performance is very close to the worst of all UK airports.
The origination of this current stagnation was when the airport prostituted itself to Michael Bishop / British Midland, after Go set up shop. Until that point, there was a steady but slow growth in traffic out of EMA. When Go moved in, SMDB got scared and in a cynical knee-jerk reaction converted British Midlands's EMA regional routes into bmibaby, with the airport supporting him through stupidly offering large discounts.
All of those old full-service regional routes - AMS, CDG etc. - were doing OK before that, but they needed a combination of business and leisure passengers to fill the aeroplane to make economic sense. Now of course, as the airport let bmi move into the "low-fare" sector through the vehicle of bmibaby, the low-fare sector skims off much of the leisure traffic, and it therefore becomes much hmore difficult for main stream operators to move into the routes and make them work.
Business relies on connections - with the current offer from WW, no business travellers will want to fly from EMA to [say] Moscow via AMS, partly because of the extra costs, through checkin and baggage hassles, but mainly because of the risk of an off-line connection in AMS which means that if WW runs late out of EMA and a connection is missed, KL has no liability to sort out the mess for the passenger in AMS.
The leisure market is fickle - just consider what frequency EMA had to PRG just a year or two back and look at it now. Boozers and shaggers can only go to such places so many times, and when discretionary spend is restricted they cut back at least as much as, if not more than, business travellers do. RYR are downsizing in Eastern Europe, because the market isn't there anymore. Business traffic is subject to downturns, but it bounces back sooner or later. Rather misguidedly, EMA set up their stall for the bottom end of the market for short term gains, and they are now reaping the rewards - or lack thereof.
I'm really pleased to hear that Penny Coates is moving on - she has done absolutely no favours to the airport, and subscribed it to the ongoing low cost mentality (pile it high, sell it cheap was a predictable approach from someone who did not know the airline industry and came from Walmart, I suppose). I'm just surprised that she's supposedly been promoted rather than fired - but that says a lot for the people running MAG too.
A