Originally Posted by
LEEDS APPROACH
Quite clearly Andrew you do not actually know what you are talking about!
EVERY year 5 million (and rising at an alarming rate) Yorkshire and Humberside residents are flying from Manchester airport. Not to Beijing but to Alicante etc.
For every 3 persons in a queue at Manchester airport who reside in the North West there will be 1 person who resides in Yorkshire and Humberside.
This is just 1 competitor airport [man]! Many 100s of thousands of Yorkshire and Humberside residents are flying from LPL, EMA, NCL, BHX etc etc EVERY year.
This ONE direction leakage is purely down to the location, amount and functionality of airports within Yorkshire and Humber(side).
Of course the propensity to fly is slightly higher in the North West than Yorkshire and the Humber - Because if you have some thing that is able to be used - you are more likely to use it. People who live in the Alps are more likely to ski than those that live in the Sahara! If you are a company that needs to ski you most certainly do not base yourself in the Sahara! Not rocket science kids! Give the East of the Pennines 1 sensible civil aviation solution and those propensities will equalise.
The propensities to fly will only stretch further apart while Yorkshire and the Humber has an utterly failing civil aviation strategy of having too many restricted airports in completely the wrong location.
LEEDS APPROACH, you don't do numbers too well do you? I'd love to know the sources for some of your 'statistics '...
By your logic, practically the whole population of Yorks and Humber is choosing to fly from Manchester. I'm not sure then where the Yorkshire folk flying from other airports (including Leeds and Doncaster)are appearing from...