I'm always intrigued by the concept of airports not letting airlines in. If you mean achieving this by not offering any sort of discount for either promised passenger quantity or new routes then I can understand that. However has an airport (that is not overcrowded and hence slot constrained) ever told an airline they are not welcome as they don't align with the airport's business model? I find that a lot harder to believe.

Unless the UK has turned in a banana republic, it must be unlawful under competition law if a publicly licenced airport refuses to contract with an airline that is willing to pay the published fees. At least that is the case in jurisdictions I am more familiar with. My understanding is that in return for being publicly licenced, airports must serve any airline that meets the published criteria and coughs up the required dough.

Luton lets anyone in and then lets them fight it out with Easyjet. El Al, Transavia and Vueling come to mind and even Ryanair are now fighting a same route battle with Easyjet.

Agree, airports can't put barriers up to carriers they don't want serving particular routes, but, and there is a big but, they can be less generous with sweeteners that encourage carriers to build up big bases and become dominant in their market, dissuading new entrants to come in. These same dominant carriers seem to have a belief that somehow it isn't their job to pay for facilities that they use, leaving the airport to annoy passengers with petty extra charges for things like drop off, express security, baggage trolleys. The airport can't recoup all the missing revenue from the passengers, so investment in terminal facilities suffers, and that in turn will put off full service airlines.

For my money, although BHX, and to a lesser extent, MAN got a lot of stick for not piling in with the big "low cost" airlines early enough, they have played a better long game by ensuring their legacy carriers offering connection via European, and Mid. East hubs were looked after before enticing the cheap end of the market. The result is that they have a better mix of business and leisure carriers and routes.

Frightening potential problem could loom, as Ryanair concentrate more on primary airports. What would happen were they to transfer more business away from EMA towards BHX? A prospect, perhaps not so remote, that doesn't really bear thinking about.

Whilst you have a valid point I think the working relationship between Ryanair and the greater MAG Group probably works to prevent divestment to a competitor.

Add to that Ryanair use EMA for training operations

Bottom line is that East Midlands has a more rural and leisure oriented catchment than say BHX or MAN.

Both BHX and MAN were late to "wake up and smell the coffee" with regard to the low cost evolution of short-haul and this worked to the benefit of airports like EMA and LPL for a while. This situation has now changed. Had this not been the case at BHX then EMA today would be more like CWL (+ cargo).

I think you are massively overcomplicating matters re EMA. The airport has fantastic private transport accessibility but its population catchment, although not that small, is fairly finite and confined. In other words the exact location of the airport on the M1 could not be better to ideally serve its catchment area population- it literally gets the absolute best from its relatively small geographic catchment. The reason why its passenger growth has slowed in recent years is because it has come under attack from the South with BHX's greater efficiency due to runway extension [runway extensions do NOT just mean ability to handle bigger aircraft]. Greater efficiency = lower costs and these lower costs suck passengers out of the East Midlands to BHX. The other main reason is that it has come under attack from the North and DSA. Many hundreds of thousands of passengers from South Yorkshire have traditionally used EMA because of the ease and time of getting there. This number has obviously reduced as DSA seeks to establish itself. Would it not have been better for EI to have more flights from one of the airports rather than divide the flights between 2 airports?

The real question that should be asked is are MAG really that interested in taking DSA on? If EMA wanted to beat DSA they, on a level playing field, could. EMA has the bigger population catchment. In other words why are BE flying daily from DSA to CDG when they could so from the larger population East Midlands? Forget sustainability - It's all to do with the deals these days.

Don't entirely agree with you the catchment being heavily leisure orientated. Among other major employers are Rolls Royce, Boots, Toyota, Expedia and Capital One all of whom ought to have a requirement to fly to meetings in Europe and further afield. I actually think that pre-MAG ownership the management were more interested in courting a big low cost operator, and paid too little attention to the business and commerce requirement of the region.

As for the private transport accessibility I would question that. J24 of the M1 is a total pig in a poke, and the planners have managed to allow major events at Donington park, both car and motorcycle racing as well as things like Download which make getting to the airport on time on some weekends something of a lottery. For that reason, I'd certainly think twice about flying from EMA on a summer weekend - or for that matter, any Friday evening when again, the M1 is often snarled up back as far as J21 northbound due to "sheer volume of traffic" which is a euphemism for rank bad infrastructure planning.

ATNotts
And to support you the A453 South up to Moto and through to the Airport is at a standstill.
Punters are de-camping and walking up the Northbound A453 some with kids - in the rain and what 2 miles away.
Where are Airport Staff - no where to be seen. Even if they had a bus outside the Holiday Inn to take punters in.
JOKE

They're stuck in the same traffic. Several flights were delayed as crew were caught in traffic.
Why would the airport divert a car park bus on the off chance there are people walking up to the airport? As harsh as it is, it's pax responsibility to get to the airport on time. And yes,i know it would be good customer service, etc,

Agreed, it is passenger's responsibility, but does everyone travelling to EMA know about events such as Download are likely to impact on their journeys? I do, but then I live not 15 minutes from EMA - but not everyone does.

EMA has problems regularly, whether it be Download, Superbikes, even the car boot sales! Road access isn't actually that great, with a single carriageway road, which is often used as a main diversionary route when either the M1 or A42 are congested.

Jet2 sent travel warnings to their customers about Download.

I agree with all your points regarding road access. At least it's better than LBA!

How dare you!!

At least the old bill came to the rescue and closed the A453 link to M1 South filter at Jct 24.
This was basically the issue - turn what is normally a quiet road into a busy road. The answer - complete chaos when its busy (you only have to be there at peak times during normal days to understand)
Turn the filter off - some sense of normality.
And yes it wasn't the airports fault but seeing a family walking up the A453 against the traffic flow with buggy and cases. It made me so ANGRY (hence the name):\:\:\:\:\:\:\

It didn't help that someone chose yesterday to threaten to throw
himself off a bridge over the M1. The southbound carriageway
of the M1 has now been closed for over 24 hours and the area all
around the airport is gridlocked as the Downloaders try and make their way home.

Not wishing to appear harsh, but exactly how long are Leicestershire Police going to allow this situation to drag on for, another 24 hours, till the weekend - till July??

I'm a simple person, but surely, with a clear carriageway, and deployment of a safety net underneath the gantry where this nutcase is threatening to jump from, they could encourage him / her either to jump into the net, or get removed from the place where they are threatening to jump from.

Can it really be that difficult?

I've edited it for you ATNotts:

Where this nutcase is threatening to jump from, they could encourage him / her to jump

Yes. Even if such a thing as a safety net suitable for this sort of application exists it first needs to be properly deployed. That takes time and makes assumption that doing so doesn't further up the ante with somebody who is, judging by press reports, seriously disturbed.

I'm afraid Police will just have to let it run its course. Negotiation skills, exhaustion and hunger are likely to be only available tools.

Turns out he was only on the back of an information gantry. That's lower than most bridges. Surely you could just get 4 artics to pull up underneath and then wrestle him down? H&S / human rights probably prevented this. What an idiot.

AT Notts
I'm with you. Or get the Saudi police over to deal with him ��