Slowclimber,
I think it is maybe you who are 'missing the point'! Read the post by OA32 who was working that evening, and who has a profile that indicates they work in the Channel Islands...
Refiling if it was a CAT A flight would have taken minutes. That is of course if it was filed as a CAT A flight.
As for your point about aircraft handling - it would have been just as difficult (in fact probably more so) to arrange at EGHI
out of hours than it would at EGHH which operates H24
It is very difficult from a licensing (airport operating point of view) to extend at short notice, this has nothing to do with SRATCOH or individual ATCOS.
The Southampton area in particular is harshly policed due to the New Forest NIMBYS (I myself am a New Forest dweller). As an aircraft operator, it extremely irresponsible and unnprofessional to plan a flight to an airport that you know will be closed. As
appears to be the case in the reported incident, the aircraft operator did the responsible thing and when they knew they would be outside the operating hours of EGHI they planned for EGHH instead.
The
facts of this story are known by (probably) a small number of people... I would trust OA32's version over that reported by the media.
As an aside, as you mentioned it, the fact that the ambulance was delayed in getting to Bournemouth has absolutely nothing to do with NATS, nor the Airport Authority, an unfortunate additional factor maybe, but nothing to do with the airport.