Originally Posted by
asdf1234
Because the airport was being run as a passenger and freight airport. Take away the passenger requirement and the headcount overhead reduces dramatically. Firemen and ATCs were bleeding the place dry.
I'm not an expert on these things, but can remember the fire cat on large freight aircraft being the same as the feeder liners, especially if dangerous goods were involved? And I remember a single at member waiting patiently for hours after the airport closed for a late night arrival. Only extra staff passenger aircraft needed were security and customer service, the majority of whom were on minimum wage and zero hour contracts.
Why didn't freight work so well? Because those firemen did all the unloading of cargo aircraft, leaving to deal with other things, they all had to stay for the late night arrivals (when allowed) on overtime. Due to staff and ramp space only one aircraft could be unloaded at a time and the ramp equipment was ancient and always breaking; management bought some cheap fueling steps that took months to come into service as it had the wrong tow bar, wrong connectors and wasn't self braked, meaning buying new parts and wasn't a priority compared to the broken down high loads and tugs the 1 guy in MT was working on. But despite this, except when equipment broke unloading(or caught fire) crews were really impressed with the speed of turnaround.
Those are more the reason what could have been a busy cargo hub failed with previous owners