In the mid 1990s BAE applied to have a city airport at Filton. Following a government inspector enquiry the relevant secretary of state (may have been Selwyn Gummer) rejected the application.
With hindsight Bristol Corporation, as the city council was known then, should have pushed for Filton when they closed their Bristol Whitchurch airport in the 1950s on the grounds that it was too small for future aircraft types - that wheel keeps on turning.
Instead they opted for the former RAF Lulsgate Bottom (sounds almost Shakespearean), by then a glider club, which they were able to purchase. Filton, had the then owners Bristol Aeroplane Company (long since swallowed up in what is now BAE) been willing to have a civil airport on its works aerodrome, may not have been considered although claims surface from time to time that the city council could have gone to Filton as tenants at a peppercorn rent. Had they done so we can only speculate what sort of operation might be in place there today.
In fairness, regional airports such as Bristol were little more than quaint sideshows 60 years ago and no-one could have foreseen how the low-cost airline industry would revolutionise previously sleepy little airports. Even 20 years ago no-one, not even the indomitable Les Wilson (Mr Bristol Airport, the airport MD who was killed in a car accident in the mid 1990s) would have been so bold as to venture that BRS would be handling nearly seven million passengers a year by 2015.