Originally Posted by
racedo
Blunt answer is that there isn't enough business to keep all the airports open.
Desire of eveybody is to "fly" from local airport so they don't have to drive 2 hours to nearest big one. Great so Mr and Mrs A wish local airport to have 737/320s operating out of there for the 1 or 2 occasions a year fly from there but wish to pay same price as flying from Stansted/Man etc.
Surveys that I have seen recently agree between themselves that Mr & Mrs A's actual reasons for choosing a flight from airport YYY are (in order) Location, Flight times, and price. The reason they don't fly from XXX is more often due to a poor choice of destinations or flights at the wrong time rather than the cost.
At a trade fair last week where I was discussing this question with interested business parties, the opinion was unanimous: they don't want a token B737 or A320 appearing twice or three times a week. They want a smaller aircraft sitting at XXX around which they can build their business. It doesn't matter that the operating costs are higher because Mr & Mrs A are getting a whole lot more "added value" from the service provider (and that doesn't just mean a key to the executive lounge or an extra couple of centimetres of legroom).
Unfortunately, there is a misconception in the airline industry that aircraft have to be kept flying to make money, when the reality is that the diversification needed means letting us on the "outside" use aircraft that way we want. The same applies to regional airports. I've currently got a portfolio of businesses and regional customers waiting to spend several million €/annum on a new air service, but it is proving almost impossible to get any AOC holder to agree to park his 'plane where we can see it, i.e. on the ground where we can make (a lot) more than the paltry $5/3€70 profit per passenger reported by IATA for a "good" year.