In my opinion, his dismissal (and that of others) was in no way justified by his professional track record at MAN
The loss of his expertise and contacts (and that of his colleagues) was a blow which set Manchester Airport back. I'm sure some of his successors were fine executives too, but that vacancy should never have arisen.
Shed
I think you are on a very sticky wicket with statements like that. Who knows why any of these nine lost their jobs except management at the time - and no I wasn't one of them. It's not our job to speculate either as to the performance of any of them - unless you were personally involved as the manager of one of them ?
I'll just say that for the six year period after this, the passenger throughput increased from 19.3 million to 22.4 million and the flown freight throughput increased by around 60%, so I'm not sure how this
was a blow which set Manchester Airport back
Add in the difficult times after the Twin Towers disaster and ever increasing security costs, and the early naughties were a difficult time for airports and airlines, so to achieve such growth wasn't bad by any means. That's not to say that everything was hunky dory though.
You must look at this in the context of 2001 when the Airport was fully regulated by CAA Economic Regulation Group. Their review every 5 years meant that they
and the airlines were able to forensically go over all the airport's budgets and balance sheets and query things in loads of detail. There was therefore considerable pressure on the airport from both the regulator
and the customer airlines to reduce its relatively high costs and something had to be done. There was shareholder pressure too. Re-organising staff structures is one way that costs were reduced, slashing budgets was another. Capital projects were subject to intense scrutiny on all sides.
Costs were reduced and fees to airlines capped or reduced and you can argue that this stimulated additional business, including embracing low cost airlines at prices they were prepared to pay. I would suggest that this formed the base for the airline profile you have today at MAN.
Declines in throughput only started to occur around the time of the financial crisis and it has taken a decade for the passenger figures to recover. Not so flown cargo throughput, because as I posted earlier the supply chain model has changed since then and as Skipness notes, the all freighter environment is now very challenging.
The Northern Powerhouse requires access to markets and Manchester will be a major part of that. I will re-iterate again that
What is important for the region is that the North's shippers have enough options to get their goods to market in a timely and cost effective manner. For some a consolidation at MAN and a lorry transit to other airports will produce a cheaper rate and they are prepared to put up with whatever the time penalty is.
However, it is certainly of concern if the current marketing set up is dissuading airlines who see MAN as a viable option for an all freight service.