I see that Monarch which recently vacated one of its hangars at Luton is to build a new hangar at Birmingham. The airline has said that it will create up to 300 jobs at Birmingham Airport with the development of a new hangar and engineering facility that is large enough to accommodate two Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. It has also said that there is the likelihood of the project creating a further 150 jobs at a later stage.
I think easyJet also made some announcement a few weeks ago about creating a huge hangar at Gatwick for their engineering there.
Its a real shame to see these airlines, which HQ is based at Luton, moving facilities away to other airports. Unfortunately it seems to be the norm for all of them Monarch, Thomson and easyJet, where they now only have administrative HQ and the vast majority of their ops are from bigger airports like LGW, MAN and BHX...
The problem with Luton is very much space, and the aging hangars, which don't necessarily meet today's requirements.
Where the likes of Birmingham have a whole lot of space of the western side of the runway, where the old terminal was based and has very little use.