Originally Posted by
Andy_S
I would have thought having "fierce and efficient competition all around your catchment area" was an excellent thing for passengers within that catchment area.
Absolutely not if you think about it. It's not good for the passengers within that region and it's not good at all for that region. If you are having to travel out of your region because the airport is difficult to get to or has very difficult access in combination with the increased unreliability due to weather and / or it doesn't pool the catchment to make a certain route work (Cork, Copenhagen, Dubai, Frankfurt, Florida, Brussels etc etc) then the region loses the custom and the passenger has to pay again and again to get to a competing airport that is easy to get to and sustains the route. That is exactly the point the region needs to encourage passengers to stay in the region - not dividing up the catchment so that routes cannot work. The passenger and the region wins.