Originally Posted by
LEEDS APPROACH
I cannot agree with your statement. Can you offer some proof or link to your 10-15% figure? The word 'typically' simply cannot be used for two reasons. There is an absolute plethora of airline/airport deals lasting varying amounts of time and involving all kinds of sliding scale variables. Then there is the creative accounting that lumps huge amounts of operating costs into the actual deal. You simply cannot compare the operating costs into Munich or Frankfurt with the operating costs into Oban, Derry, Carlisle or Norwich etc.
It is an absolute scandalous disgrace that the public's personal money is going to be given to Private well established airline and airport companies to pay for expensive operations that cannot stand on their own two feet. If something works it does not need a 'helping hand'. Routes either work or do not work at certain points in time for very good scientific reasons involving location, competition, demand and price etc. This is what the Govt. should be spending Joe Public's hard earned on! As for the body that decides the 'criteria' for these routes - what an absolute (bad) joke.
I'm not offering any "proof". I base the number on my own experience of evaluating route operating economics, and of course the proportion of airport costs will vary based on the airport deal, on the aircraft type, etc. I absolutely, totally agree with you that this varies hugely from route to route and airport to airport and that we can't compare Oban-Barra with Southampton-Lyon. The point I am simply trying to make is that this "funding" is not some sort of magic cure-all - it only addresses one component of the operating costs, and therefore will have a distinctly marginal effect on turning an unprofitable route into a profitable one. I am not in any way defending this scheme, which I think is a complete turkey.