Mark,
Can BOH get back to that elusive one million passenger mark again? It briefly achieved it in 2007 / 2008 but hasn't come close since. It only needs another one or two based aircraft but that has remained as elusive as ever. I think it only happened in those years when Palmair used two 737-200s for just a couple of seasons as well as Thomson and Ryanair aircraft. It seems amazing that MAG spent all that money back then and have effectively made no real progress at all in attracting just one or two more based aircraft. Either the market just isn't there, which I find hard to believe having reached that milestone before investing 45 million to take the total up to 3 million by now or something more sinister is going on with MAG. I think most locals wish that Palmair hadn't been forced by Ryanair to give up. It would certainly have been a different outcome if they had been able to continue. Since then, as a direct result of Ryanair and MAGs very cosy arrangement, the door has been closed to anybody else trying to muscle in and as a direct result the entire growth of the airport stiffled for the foreseeable future. What is hard to understand is why MAG invested so much when the pax figure was one million to continue that growth, only to go backwards as a result of perhaps their "not quite so cosy" arrangement with Ryanair after all. And now they try and make peanuts out of people dropping off as there appears no other way! Very sad indeed. I've witnessed such incredible growth at Gatwick since 2008 as well as the same at Heathrow, Luton, Stansted, Southend, Southampton etc and even places like Newquay and Doncaster etc. How Bournemouth, in central Southern England, seems to be missing out so much strikes me as just incredible. We've had this conversation before but I think the sad tail of BOH as a commercial airport will rumble on for years to come. At best, simply complete incompetence, at worst just utter gross mismanagement! Most days you can drive past the South apron and it is either empty or very occasionally there is one 737 sat there with just six departures a day on a busy summer weekend day.