Skipness One Echo
I wonder if premium pax spend all their time in the lounge rather than supporting jobs in the shops. Indeed the passenger throughput with MON would be higher. Maybe I am playing devils advocate, but a lot of this seems to be "my neighbour's grass is greener".
You make a very interesting observation.
It's families with kids that are more likely to spend in the cafes and shops than business passengers, who are likely to check-in later, and be interested in little else than getting to their destination, doing their business and return home. As they are probbaly travelling for a matter of days rather than weeks, they won't need to avail themselves of baggage trolleys, and are probably the only people able to afford UK train fares, and thus might not even use the car parks! Business passengers are also more likely to use only check-in than you're family on the daily Monarch 330 to Malaga, so won't necessarily contribute to employment in the check-in hall.