highwideandugly I am far from blinkered and have had a close relationship with the airport for 20+ years! I have seen things come and go. The facts are that too many people believe the be and end all is passengers! Airfields do and can survive with out passengers and before you point out an airport with out passengers is and airfield, I know.
B737 aircraft were the wrong sized aircraft, point is that Globespan, bmibaby or Ryanair could make them work in the long term on routes! The routes needed to be carefully chosen with the right aircraft, frequencies and timings. This was never done and all that has happened is that the routes came and went! This has put people off and put other airlines off. Yes there are many other reasons why lowcost services didn't take off at MME but these are the main reasons. It isn't only lowcost that have got it wrong though, Eastern did with their Brussels services that left MME to late arriving in Brussels to late and thus returning back to the UK to late! This all leads to bad publicity and a poor reputation with the general public and other airlines.
I do feel though most of the blame at the airport rest at the incompetence of the senior managment.
I think most on here would agree that there are ways out of the situation but the managment and operators just don't seemed to be bothered with the business and I know thre don't care about the staff.