As a Sheffielder, I'm afraid I have to say that Finningley isn't 20 minutes away. At best it takes 45 minutes by car, sometimes longer.
Sheffield Airport was (as has been said) deliberately sold so that it could be turned into a business park after a few years. Nobody with any brain cells in Sheffield believes anything other than this. We're all sure that the whole saga was a cynical plan to simply create a business park on the cheap. Sadly, our council are pretty good at creating stupid or expensive schemes.
The main reason the airport closed (so it was claimed) was that the main slots into Schipol were lost (maybe deliberately, who knows?) and this was used as the main excuse. Clearly, the runway was never long enough for serious commercial operations, but there's no reason why it could not be used for business flying and recreational flying, and perhaps a fast link to Finningley.
Truth of the matter is that our backward council doesn't want the airport and never did. They are only interested in investing in sport. If the project had been serious it wouldn't have been built where it is in the first place. An area where a longer runway could be laid would have been chosen.
Finningley has no relationship to Sheffield. Peel's cynical attempt to name the airport as "Sheffield-Doncaster" is just an insult. It's an hour away so it may as well be completely disassociated with us.
Sadly, I fear Sheffield will always be the largest city in Europe without an airport. Out retarded councillors are far more interested in football than flying and sadly the local electorate are sufficiently dim to keep voting for them
