On the face of it, the paragraph you refer to seems fairly positive for Stansted. The trouble is it's full of assumptions. What seems to be implied is that increasing numbers of passengers do not increase the wear and tear on the terminal and infrastructure (a "largely fixed cost business"). It's the old mass tourism problem revisited. Will the profit level from increased traffic meet the expenses of infrastructure maintenance and refurbishment?. There's also the assumption ("benefit of retail sales") that Ryanair passengers have the same financial power as those flying with other carriers and so will have the shopkeepers' delighted. Has that been proven elsewhere? My own suspicion is that retail margins will be lower because those products proving popular will in fact be lower margin products while higher margin products will eventually disappear from the shops. To me it seems like an exercise in chasing passenger numbers at every cost.
Another attempt to try and claim that people flying Ryanair do not have any money.
Stansted KNOW what Ryanair passengers spend because they have 13 Million of them a year.
If as you claim that more passengers would be reducing high margin items then wouldn't they have already done so years ago
Claims that it will cost the airport more in terms of wear and tear are pretty bogus because wear and tear happens anyway and instead of having 20 million in 18 months you have 20 million in 15 months..............little or no difference.
Infrastructure already in place with car parks, acccess, trains etc so instead of a Stansted express going with 150 passengers it has 250, no additional cost in the slightest.