There seems to be some confusion regarding the ownership of MME, so I'm going to try my best to explain things:
When
Peel Airports Ltd first purchased the airport, they did so under the impression that DSA would not receive planning permission. When DSA did get the go-ahead, they changed their focus for MME from a commercially viable airport to a significant land development opportunity and as part of this ran the facility into the ground.
After several years of doing this, at some point they realised they couldn't achieve their goal for various reasons one of which was due to there being deeds on the land which specify it can only be used and developed for aviation-related purposes.
This is where
Vancouver Airport Services came in, Peel decided to get shot and sought a partner to take a shareholding in their Airports division with the view to letting said partner take full control regardless of how much or little of the division they bought. Unfortunately for us, VAS only wanted Liverpool but they had to take us on along with DSA as part of the deal. So back to square one.
VAS then went about reducing the overheads at the airport which included making staff redundant with, on hindsight, no intention of developing the airport thereafter. Vancouver eventually decided to get rid and placed us up for sale.
Peel Airports Ltd running us into the ground damaged the reputation of the wider Peel group, contractors are/were reluctant to do business with them because of the way they treated us. The Chairman and majority owner of the
top/main division Peel Holdings Plc, John Whittaker, decided the best way to reverse this was to buy back MME and try to build it back up again, so he did under a new Peel subsidiary and
current owner Peel Investments (DTVA) Ltd.
The advantage we have now is we are much higher up the Peel tree than DSA and LPL. The active problem we have now though, is that
Peel Airports Ltd are still dragging us down. When MME got rid of it's Information Desk, as well as various other services, they went to LPL, who charged us a fee at the smaller end of the five-figure range which was apparently cheaper than having it in-house. When the takeover went through, the
tripled this to the higher end of the five-figure range. Things like fire alarms and door control and electrics and all sorts of other utilities are operated by DSA and LPL and this is a big problem which "our" Peel are in the process of bringing back in-house. In short, we may now be separate to DSA and LPL, but they're still pulling our strings for a little while longer. This is where Andy Foulds and a new Property Director who has also joined the team come in, they're all part of a wider strategy to get MME back on it's own two feet.
If you look hard enough you can now see effort being put into the place. Back in the spring a six-figure fee was spent on revamping and repairing the terminal, anyone who's driven past Hangar One in the last few weeks will have seen the work being done on that, also six figures (they are also boasting about spending a large amount of money on a new X-Ray machine, but they were legally required to buy it and had no say in the matter so this doesn't count). Staff morale, which was at rock-bottom, is also on the rise and most significantly, airlines are said to be willing to talk to us again whereas when Peel approached them in the past, they simply didn't want to know. I've also heard a couple of reports that airlines have actually approached Peel first recently, rather than Peel going to them.
Nothing happens overnight in the airline industry as you all know, as DTVAirport mentioned you're looking at a couple of years rather than a couple of months before any new airlines and routes appear. But as we go back on the up again NCL heads in the opposite direction. OK fair enough we'll never ever overtake them, but look at the routes they've lost in recent times, look at the debt they're in, a debt that will get called in should there be another black Friday then they'd really be screwed.
There's a long road ahead but things are stabilizing.