People need to stop believing the crap that comes out of the various property development companies/venture capital enterprises/private equity corporations that now own most of the UK's national aviation infrastructure. DSA's whole business case, as presented by Peel in the heady days of the public inquiry in 2003, rested on stealing the vast bulk of the airport's traffic from Manchester, Leeds Bradford and Humberside. Those heady days are now long gone and the traffic - if it ever was there - has now disappeared. Long ago, we all used to believe that every town's airport was somehow public property, and part of the 'public good'. In most cases that was also literally true. Now that we have all allegedly decided that airports are just another private asset that is to be gambled on in the shady world of derivatives and 'positions', the idea that an airport ought to actually provide services to the local community is anathema.
I empathise with people who have jobs at the likes of DSA. Like so many other employees these days they are at the mercy of amoral company directors who spend their time moving speculative assets around and collecting guarantees of lifetime leisure while making lots of other people live on the edge from day to day.
NS