P330:
I think it will be very hard to grow a passenger airport
But who's proposing to grow it? The Master Plan proposes (or estimates? or assumes? not clear) that pax will "grow" to 200,000 by 2020. But that's barely 22% of the peak figure in 2006, and only a 20% increase on the 2012 figure. More importantly, the Master Plan doesn't envisage anything other than the existing KLM/Eastern/Flybe Jersey services operating in 2020, so it assumes that the whole of the pax growth (including making up for the pax lost from holiday charters) is from those routes. I don't see that as a plan at all. I think the Master Plan is essentially an admission of defeat. The 200k figure isn't their own projection based on their own plan to attract traffic, it's simply a regurgitation of DfT's own 10-month-old estimate of the dismal future prospects for this beknighted airport.
Another aspect: look at their cargo plans. Lots of ground infrastructure, but for what? Three B737 flights a day. And how will they attract that? We're told the demand for specialist inbound industrial freight on KLM flights shows there's a future. But that freight amounts to less than half a tonne a year - so little that it doesn't even register in the CAA stats.
This is just a glossy brochure. All fur coat and nae knickers.
NS