Thanks for posting the links Ringwayman.
Bloomberg is becoming quite a useful outlet for MAN news and articles. More so than some of our daily broadsheets although the FT is ok.
As mentioned, it includes this quote:
O’Toole said. “We’ll reach 25 million passengers in the short term, and we think the airport has the potential to get into the mid 30 millions by the late 2020s or early 2030s.”
No doubt someone can calculate the overall compound rate of growth that an extra 12m pax over say 15 years implies. It is actually pretty cautious in terms of average annual growth, but probably rightly so given the need to factor in the possibilities of financial crisis, impact of wars, terrorism etc. which can so badly affect expansion as we saw for several years from 2007.
However, based on what has already been announced for 2016, it's not totally unrealistic to see 25m pax being achieved next year, (subject to the unpredictable situations referred to), which would be at least twice the growth rate required to hit 35m in the time frame given.
I wonder also whether MAN has tried to factor in the consequences if R3 at LHR were opened in that period, if indeed it believes it would have a material effect on MAN's potential growth.