With car in the long term car park at BRS -Another point why dont they actually tarmac that car park properly.....
It's a perfectly reasonable question and you're certainly not the first to raise the issue. The answer is probably that there is little competition and that punters will park at the airport anyway.
In fact, there are competitors nearby some of whom in the past were the subject of complaints by the airport to the planning authority. Some were closed down by the local authority but others have continued, possibly because they also offer accommodation and parking in some cases. They now seem to co-exist with the airport as their minibuses are in and out of the airport's drop-off car park all day long. Nevertheless, the airport's own car parks never appear to lack customers.
Two multi-storey car parks feature in the airport's expansion plans.
As for today's unfortunate events the airport and airline staff deserve high praise for their efforts in keeping things going in the face of challenging conditions. A number of flights are still showing delays, some of several hours, but there have been no cancellations. The worst of the disruption occurred at the busiest time with 23 of today's 90 departures scheduled before 0730 with most of the aircraft being 150-seaters or larger. Given BRS's limited footprint there were a lot of passengers to squeeze into a relatively small space with others arriving all the time.
Most of those passengers interviewed on the local telly, radio and newspaper were sympathetic to the situation. A pat on the back too for Robert Sinclair the airport CEO who came out of his office onto the 'factory floor' to explain and apologise to potentially disgruntled passengers.
The main question appears to relate to the failure of the back-up generators and the CEO recognised this in an interview on the local tv news.