Bankstown Airport – Desperately Sad

[Perspective]

FFS..........
I have not seen anyone yet, that come close to addressing Dick's original question.
His offer to do costings.
Here is a question then.
All of the fire fighting aircraft to a large degree are kept, maintained, assembled and initially at least, Operated from airports owned in a lot if cases at sold off secondary airports I assume. As such, the cost built in to contracts to cover these expenses must be significant, particularly when operating Very large fire fighting turbo props or jets.
What is the cost of operating at these airports.

-Parking, landing fees, transport to effected areas eg.(most bush fires are not at inner city burbs)
- what would be the savings to infrastructure with reduced time to effected areas and ability to operate larger aircraft closer to where they are needed.
-what could the projected savings be over the next century as people and infrastructure continue to move into more densely tree'd (bush land) areas.

I don't blame the guys who now own the secondary airports, for the most part, I highly doubt most of the people associated with them are too enthusiastic about aviation in general, in other words, GA aviation exists to a large degree because of peoples enthusiasm
For flying, love of it even, sense of adventure, it gets romanticised a lot if you will.
They have every right to engineer for profit, we will never be able to compete with amatil coca-cola or schenker logistics, or even Jeep. Essendon airport, most likely still exists only due to the major corporate Bizjet activity, and the people that own them.
So as it becomes clear that they can make significantly more money from large logistics companies and wharehouses, why other than their contractural obligations would they not lean that way.
Would a landing field reduced to just helicopter movements still qualify as an airport?

As the urban sprawl continues, incidents become more of a Media melodramatic plaything, and liability becoming more of a focus, land becomes more valuable, there will be pressure to move airports with a "large amount" of activity away from built up areas.
All of this is going in one direction.

I believe investment is sort of happening (airport upgades)with the government grants that have been on offer, so
In that respect it has been encouraging and supportive, although this does not change
The crux of the issue at larger, corporate owned inner area, airports.