Thanks for your replies. Of course there is the proximity of the Channel tunnel, but the nearest eurostar station is farther away from Ostend,Ghent and Bruges. Not everyone is travelling with 4-5 people at a time. Also the ferry Ramsgate - Ostend only takes cars,no walking passengers. Catchment area for OST is 3-4 million people.
I never understood why Ryanair started with STN-OST and only that connection. They should be thinking of departure airports farther away from the chunnel such as Glasgow,Edinburg,Dublin to the west and Rome,Lourdes,Barcelona,Faro,... to the South . Berlin to the East. (As manston is doing with MAN & EDI flights by Flybe)
Flybe could be thinking of Manchester-OST. Aer arran/Aer Lingus could be starting up flights to Dublin year round and Shannon in summer.Besides the point-to-point traffic ,that would give some interesting connection possibilities to other UK and European cities ,and even intercontinental such as New York and DUBAI. (Belgium does not have yet a direct connection with this growing city). OST does not have scheduled flights,although the current charter flights are at least weekly and very popular indeed. Last year PAX traffic increased with 10,8 % as compared to 2009(213.000 PAX). So there IS potential ,but someone needs to discover and exploit it properly..
