Phileas Fogg:
Just to tidy up the Sheffield City element of this discussion. I am not sure if the initial services in 1997 were DHC7 operated, but the runway length at EGSY was 1211m/3972ft which looks maginal for 146 operation. Destinations were Belfast, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin Jersey and London. Despite a bright start to these scheduled operations, traffic soon tailed-off, I suppose the inevitable result of these being relatively high-cost flights, at a time when cheap flights were the vogue.
Sheffield City was born out of a plan to reclaim a derelict industrial area, and Sheffield Development Corporation contracted mining engineers R J Budge to recover the coal and other material, but part-way through the contract R J Budge went into liquidation, so I dont know who actually completed the construction of the airfield.
Eventually in around 2002 Peel Airports became involved, at about the time they were developing Doncaster/Finningley, some will say therefore that Peel had little incentive to develop EGSY. There was also controvesy at the time regarding a 10-year reversionary clause in the original land sale agreement whereby the land could be bought back for a nominal £1 if the airport was shown not to be financially viable.
Anyway as they say, the rest is now history, and as far as I am aware the proposed business park on the site has not (yet) been built. The police and air ambulance operations remain at the eastern end of the site.
Lets hope Staverton/Gloucestershire has a brighter future, as I am sure it will have.
Regards
EGCA
Last edited by EGCA; 1st Feb 2012 at 15:16.