Peel took 75% of shares for £500k!! with the promise of investing £20m.
Sounded good but was never going to happen.
The 6 councils failed to look at Peel as an operation and their core business.
Military do use DTV but only to move troop transports which take up time and room for kit. They do like to use ILS over shoots as well.
Peel started to move the goal posts years ago with the various excuses of not putting money in IF the passenger numbers didnt treble etc.
Staff who had been there years started to see the pattern in the excuses and began to jump ship for other ports.
The trouble with the current management is that the councils have handed the entire operation over for a song and they have nobody there to keep an eye on the running of the place.
If and its a big if, the operators were offered a good deal, Newcastle wouldnt be getting all the routes.
The £6 passenger tax was just another way of making the operators and public avoid the place like the plague. As others have said, no operators, routes, no public, no money.
What does this leave? Look at Peel, and see what they like to build.
Could a new Trafford Centre be on the cards? Thats a Metro Centre to the local people.
I can see only 3 winners in the current scheme of things if they do close it and build a large outlet or houses.
1. Peel,
2, Darlington, and a possible fight between Stockton and Durham councils over the scraps.
As another poster mentioned Peel sat back and watched One North East pay for the road infrastructure to be built.
Its a bit like a landlord who wants a tennant out, make it an unpleasant place to live in and hey presto you get what you want....cheap land and a lot of it between a few large boroughs.
Darlington Council should be ashamed of themselves making it known they wont fight Peel over the latest plans! Handing it to them on a plate.
I wonder why
