As for having no say in plans, well, you'd be very surprised.
Yes, fall off my seat onto my huge inflateable rubber backside surprised. I think the issue when one is passionate about a local issue such as this is that you lose persepctive. I know I have done so in the past.
From a business perspective, having a willing group of enthusiastic volunteers willing to do the donkey work for nothing is a gift. I am assuming anyone handling customer baggage for free is also
CRB checked as per Dft guidelines? My local airport was PIK but they managed to make money with only Ryanair as they had a management who cut costs to the bone then went looking for charter business. This went terribly wrong once the airport was sold to a more "commercial" operator who added costs galore because frankly they didn't understand what made the business make money in the first place.
Management at MME are
turning business away because they say they can't afford to handle them. This then sends a signal to the airline business, loud and clear that MME is off limits for charters, and also anything adhoc, last minute or outwith the wee box they've built for themselves. No management would do this accidentally, this is intentional. It took PIK years to remind the wider business that the airport hadn't
closed when BAA sold the business off. This is an intentional two fingers in the air to new business, go elsewhere, NCL or LBA will help you. This is not about stemming losses, this about a managed run down and closure of commercial passenger operations, it is astonishing to me that people are not seeing this.
So bearing that in mind, what say in the plans for the future of this business do the "Friends" have. The Americans have an expression, stop drinking the Kool Aid. It's time.