Davies Commission
Johnnychips, you are absolutely right about why Stansted didn't make it to the Davies short list. I'm always impressed by Bagso's passion for MAN - which is shared by many - but I thinks the facts speak for themselves.
I think there are three questions which were critical for MAN/MAG in relation to Davies.
1. Could expansion of regional airports (esp MAN) remove the need for new runway capacity in the London area?
Davies is clear on this one. Although there is a perception that the London airports are cluttered up with pax from the UK regions making connections, the actual numbers are quite small - a few millions. Even if all of these chose to fly from their local airport, either direct or via a different hub, it would be a drop in the ocean of London airport throughput. It might delay the need for a new runway by one or (at most) two years, but this is irrelevant in the context of the timescales being considered by Davies.
2. Leaving that aside, what more could be done to increase the usage of regional airports?
I think that MAG has reason to be a bit disappointed with Davies here. Davies dismisses such ideas as differential APD, tweaks to bilaterals etc, in a fairly high-handed way. MAG should challenge Davies on these and other points. But it doesn't really affect the fundamental point of the Davies report, namely that more runway capacity is needed in the London area.
3. Accepting that new runway capacity is needed in the London area, should STN have been on the short list?
The basic problem is the shortness of Davies's short list. He decided to have only two realistic options (LHR & LGW), and to consider further a new site on the Isle of Grain. That being the case, it is not surprising that STN failed to make the cut. Firstly, it was inevitable that LHR would be on the short list. While it has big problems in terms of its environmental impact (and politics), only government can ultimately weigh up the balance between those factors and the national interest. And with only one more real slot on the short list, LGW has a much stronger case than STN, in terms of its existing utilisation and strength of its airline mix, catchment area etc. STN's only advantage was the possibility that it might ultimately develop into a 4/5 runway hub, replacing LHR as the capital's key airport. But here Davies thought that Isle of Grain was a better bet for such a hub, partly because a STN hub would require a big reduction in the scale of LTN, thereby offsetting some of the capacity gain. So STN lost out on both grounds.
No doubt if Davies had added another airport to its short list then STN would have been the obvious bet. But I imagine that Davies wanted as short a list as possible, to justify the work of his commission.
And although MAG is no doubt embarrassed politically by the 'snub', it really has no impact on STN for the foreseeable future. No responsible owner (especially MAG's new Australian shareholders) could conceivably have proceeded with a second runway at STN in the face of a very uncertain financial return.