EGCA,
Just been reading the Wiki page regarding Sheffield, a very interesting statement:
It has been argued that it was this choice of the city airport model, coming immediately before the meteoric rise of the low cost airline in the UK, that condemned the airport from the start: Sheffield arguably did not have enough commerce to support the sort of high-fare short-hop business flights that could use the airport, while aircraft types used by the new low-cost airlines, for which there is much demand in the Sheffield area, could not use the airport due to the length of its runway.
Similar could be said to have significantly contributed to PLH's closure, as a rule of thumb the larger the aircraft the cheaper, per seat, it costs to operate, smaller aircraft cannot compete on seat prices and remain in business.
SO ... scheduled service fares in/out of Staverton would, by rule of thumb, be higher than the fares in/out of CWL, BRS, BHX, LHR etc. thus would, quote, "condemn the airport from the start", and even if larger aircraft, let's say ATR72's, operated scheduled services in/out of Staverton then where the hell are the passengers going to come from with these other already established airports being in such close proximity to Staverton?
In the old days, when PLH was developed, there were no low cost carriers, times have changed, numbers of people travelling have increased but they expect to pay a lesser fare ..... Staverton, Kidlington etc. won't be in a position to offer such lesser fares, there's a lesson to be learned by these wannabee airports, I wonder if they'll ever learn it!