Perhaps some facts to illustrate the reality of airports in the UK. The CAA publish comprehensive statistics on the throughput of all UK airports.
The past peformance and passenger trends are worth looking at.
BOH is a small regional airport, similar in size to Exeter, Durham Tees Valley, Norwich, Coventry, Blackpool, Doncaster, and these days not very different to Glasgow Prestwick and Cardiff.
This is where you will find the data:
UK Airport Statistics | Aviation Intelligence | About the CAA
I have prepared a graph (i was bored) of the throughput of these airports, and SOU, using CAA data for 2001, 2006, 2011 and projected for 2012. PM me if you want a copy.
If you take the trouble to look, you will see that BOH is the only one of any of these airports improving over 2011, and most importantly still substantially ahead of 2001 figures. Southampton hasn't done badly either, but is still in decline, although much less than its peers Prestwick and Cardiff.
Cardiff this year is back at 1996 pax levels!
BOH was at 157K pax back then... and SOU at 544k... a very different picture!
Times are hard for all UK regional airports, BOH is performing better than most, and is way ahead where it has been for most of the past 25 years. Well done!
Looking ahead, its pretty obvious that Flybe is struggling near term, and equally clear that Ryanair is booming.
If you want to understand airlines' strategy, take time to read the annual shareholder reports and interim updates, both Ryanair and Easyjet make good reading and tell you all you need to know to figure out what they will do.
Easyjet have no intention of expanding at places like BOH, their focus is business passenger growth, they are going after short haul markets served by Lufthansa, Air France, Alitalia, Iberia, TAP and British Airways.
See here:
Results centre - easyJet plc
Ryanair are likely to slowly grow at BOH and other UK bases, perhaps 5 -10% per year. In line with its published plan for growth accross Europe detailed in their investor report published a few days ago, see here:
Investor Relations News
Flybe will almost certainly shrink in UK, which will hurt SOU, and other UK bases, my guess is a 3-5% pax reduction in 2013.
Not a disaster, both SOU and BOH are doing a lot better than most of their UK peers.
FF