sanook:
I don’t think you understand what I was trying to emphasise. The current situation is not caused by the withdrawal of subsidies, but by interference
Oh don't worry I fully understand what you were trying to say. I just don't agree with it. The logic of the free market which you champion, if it continues to be applied, will centralise air travel on a few large airports which have the economies of scale and the large and dependable passenger flows to generate the car parking and shopping mall revenues which replace the subsidies of old. Public authorities in all European - and many other - countries could see long ago that local airports were a public resource which generated benefits for the wider economy and society, which is why virtually all airports were publicly-owned in the not too distant past. The demise of the public authority and the notion of public assets as accepted ideas in the last 30 years, and the inexorable drive to move resources from public to private hands, means airports can only be privately-owned now. They are therefore faced with that age-old question "how on earth do you make money out of aviation?" The answer is the same as it always was: "by making someone else bear at least some of your costs".
NS