Barton, owned by Peel, operates no scheduled flights. None of its runways are as long as SZD's and none of them are even asphalt! Why isn't that being built over?
You are merely re-stating a point I covered above. Not all airports in the UK handle scheduled flights, just as not all railway stations handle express trains.
The point is SZD was built for commercial flights, it handled them for a while, and it no longer does. If SZD was viable through non-commercial flights, what would have stopped it continuing as a going concern?
For GA, bizjets etc, airport can set the rates, then wait for the business to come in - if the location, facilities and access are suitable, build it and people will come.
For a commercial operation, it is more complex - airport and airline need to negotiate the right deal, and in many cases, viability of the whole operation can depend on one deal, which may fall through for reasons beyond the airport's immediate control. Look how baby decided MME didn't suit their business model, and off they went. Or even here at CVT, it was all down to TOM - HLX and Wizz came and went very quickly, and neither could have sustained the airport on their own.
You haven't even given us an insight into the accounts which you had claimed to have used to make your judgement.
Again, you are twisting what I am saying. I said:
perhaps I am just applying a cold, hard, accountants' look at the realities?
I never said anything about reading financial reports. My interest, as I have already stated, is in commercial flight routes. These either thrive or fail based on financial realities.
So any talk of what the airport "could" or "should" do based on the size of the city or the development of a new business park nearby or the fact people from Sheffield want to travel to certain cities (as do business people in every city) is all based on hope.
My assessments were based on the small number of routes that came and went, and the realities of the current state of the market. If you have any form of hard evidence that I have mis-judged the situation, or that some new metal has been discovered and that Sheffield is the only city in the world capable of processing it, then by all means let's hear it.