Hello bristolflyer.
I will certainly say that if the city council had relocated its airport to Filton in 1957 when they closed Whitchurch because it had become too small for the aircraft even of that era Bristol might have a busier airport now in terms of passenger numbers and atms. We have the benefit of hindsight which suggests the decision of the city councillors of the 1950s appears deeply flawed as they were storing up the same problems for future generations as those that had led them to close Whitchurch.
But would it have been that simple?
The council bought Lulsgate and gradually developed it although they eventually and reluctantly accepted that for it to really grow only the private sector could provide the means. Had the airport remained in the council's hands there is little doubt that the new terminal building would not have been built, nor the A38 diverted, nor the new control tower constructed, nor would most of the other £100 million developments of the past 15 years have occurred. Neither would we be looking at a further infrastructure expansion that could cost up to £150 million.
There is a story that circulates from time to time (it might be as mythical as the one the local news media love to perpetuate that Filton has one of the longest runways in the country, or did have until it was closed) that the Bristol Aeroplane Company (BAC) that owned and operated Filton in the 1950s had invited the city council and its airport to become tenants for a peppercorn rent.
Had the council become tenants we can't know how things might have developed over the ensuing decades, not least because the airfield owners themselves changed on several occasions through mergers and takeovers.
As with Lulsgate the city council would have reached a stage where they could not inject the cash needed to develop a Bristol Filton Airport further - this might have become apparent at an earlier stage than at Lulsgate because Filton might have grown quicker as an airport but there was serious political opposition within the council to privatisation which remained well into the 1990s leading to only part privatisation initially in 1997.
At whatever stage a Filton Airport had been placed into private hands there remains the question of whether the owners would have wanted to operate it (and inject considerable sums of money to build an aiport infrastructure) or whether they would have engaged a separate operator in some form of partnership at whatever financial and other arrangements were agreed.
By the 1990s, BAE who by then owned Filton, applied to turn it into a city airport so they obviously had their eye on the sector. The local opposition was immense and a public enquiry was held following which the secretary of state rejected the application.
Although Filton is within the contiguous built-up area of Greater Bristol it lies within the jurisdiction of South Gloucestershire unitary authority. They might not have been as accommodating towards major expansion planning applications as their counterparts at North Somerset unitary authority were for Lulsgate.
These are just some of the imponderables that lie in the way of a definitive answer that Filton would have been an improvement on Lulsgate.
If all things were equal few people would deny that Filton would have been a far better bet.
But we are where we are and Lulsgate is the only game in Bristol Town so the city region has to make the most of it and I believe, as do others, that it's done extremely well and punches above its weight.