Pug
1 - your point re understanding or agreement...It was stronger than this, there was a contract between the old owners and Peel, signed weeks before 9.11. Sabena left before 9.11 and before Peel's involvement.
2 - i recognise the point re yields vs loads. A lot of airports look at loads and load factors and think all is well, but from an airline's perspective, they could be dumping prices in order to fill the planes. Peel went to both Aer Arann and BA and pressed for the reintroductions. KLM said they could not operate the F50 at full payload and with payload restrictions they wouldn't do it. Yes costs had to be cut, it was losing a fortune.
3. The enquiry i refer to was the Finningley Public Inquiry, where MAG teamed up with LBA and SZD to object. The Inspector determined in his conclusion that their objections took up 65% of the Inquiry time. The irony was LBA and EMA listened to Peel's commercial case and promptly left to forge deals at their airports with carriers who were supportive of Finningley, but which was still going to take some years getting the approval and building it, so Finningley was possibly the best thing to happen to the other two to get them more active.
So a large part of these objections at the Inquiry were about the other airports including SZD.
4. Re commercial deals, there were commercial deals proposed to airlines which were at least as competitive as any deals I saw at the time and which totally subsidised landing fees with added marketing support, but the context was there were only a limited number of operators who could operate given the runway length.
So as i said, 'looking ahead Sheffield leaders ought to go the 20-25 mins to DSA and stick a flag in the ground; rename it Sheffield Doncaster Airport if you like (it's as close to Sheffield as many leading European airports are to their cities); capitalise on the fact that the Sheffield City Region already includes this 3000m runway and lobby for fast road connections'