Originally Posted by
Phileas Fogg
.....whilst it seems Manston have been wasting their bets on passenger ops moving in.
That’s an interesting view.
Interestingly, many years ago when the late and unlamented Wiggins took over the place, they initially proposed developing it as a freight ‘hub’. Unfortunately, rather than stick to their guns, they were quickly seduced by the idea of owning a big, sexy airport and became over-ambitious; Kent International was re-branded as ‘London’ Manston and they tried to target significant passenger operations. Eventually, of course, they bit off more than they could chew with EUJet and the whole shebang folded.
The tragedy is that they may have had the right idea initially. I don’t think that Manston was ever going to attract huge numbers of passengers, but (IMO) it had attributes that made it attractive as a freight based airport. It was always going to take time and investment to build that business up, though, and I don’t think Wiggins had the patience to do that.