Teesside was moving over 900,000 pax until Peel took over!

RobT100 and Shaftr of course are supporters/fans of LBA and HUY and I don't believe Teesside ever 'moved' over 900,000 passengers, Durham Tees Valley did in 2005 and 2006 after Peel had taken over. :rolleyes:

I fly from RHADS regularly and am sorry so many have had a negative experience. I find it to be a really great place to fly from and have never had an issue with the staff. Have also been fortunate enough to pass on my thoughts to the MD who I must say is an absolutely top bloke.

take it to the top
 

Just like handleturning, I've been through DSA at least 12 times and never had one ounce of a problem.

If the MD is as good as he says, however, customers who have not had a pleasant experience should address their concerns to him and expect a prompt reply.

Although I am a proud adopted Doncastrian, I always wondered about the potential catchment, what with LBA, MAN, HUY and EMA being reasonably nearby.

DSA's USP (unique selling point) really should be its smallness, convenience and friendliness - the road access isn't that bad, and public transport is adequate. Poor staff attitude (which I suspect is not that common) should be addressed at once.

Any sign of Vancover air services?
 

Any sign of any VAS people at Doncaster or any of the three airports?

Their top UK man is supposed to be over here now and has been at Liverpool quite often, I dont know if its from LPL that he is based out of.

Hopefully he has some sort of a clue as how to run an airport and then the group might get somewhere.

I would imagine that most enthusiasts from "this neck of the woods" think that DSA should have never been allowed to happen at all. This area was quite adequately served by MAN (long haul), EMA, LBA and HUY. It was a political decision because they thought a long runway would achieve a lot of business from outside of the UK. I think it has been proved that they were wrong.

GdLSF.

They aquired the land at Tinsley for a quid, that is arguably the best piece of development land between Leicester and Leeds. It was also quite possibly the best position for a business airport in Yorkshire, shame really.

Wait to see what Easyjet plan to do next year before having more of a definate idea, if they stay and grow then all the better ( i will certainly use them alot) but if not then it proves your point.

I was living within a few miles of Doncaster Robin Hood Airport until recently, and having flown in and out as a pilot of a based light aircraft found the security and service excellent. The airport was an absolute pleasure to fly from.
For business, I prefered Humberside. Firstly because Humberside has the KLM flights, but secondly because its just such a cosy airport, everything is setup to make it easy to fly from there. You rock up 20 minutes before, and if the doors are still open they let you onboard. What more can you ask for?
If Doncaster was to take on a scheduled flight like the KLM one, it would have to offer a customer service, particularly to it's Gold and Platinum passengers. Fasttrack services, a good lounge, priority boarding and the ability to leave your carry on at the door and collect it on arrival AMS. My worst experiences at DSA have been with arriving and having to wait over an hour for a hire car because they don't have staff onsite despite booking the car in advance.
They seem to be setup to meet the low cost airline market, and as a business traveller it can be a bit of a nightmare mixing with the low cost holidaymakers, and after a couple of experiences I refuse to do it again (nothing snobbish, just life seems to be made difficult).

Well regretably, (and not my choice) I have to fly to Warsaw on Tuesday of this week from Robin Hood, so I'll give you an update of the service I receive and the state of the toilets!!

Thanks for all your comments.
TSM

Well I flew into and out of DSA this weekend. On arrival UK Border personnel were friendly. I did notice a large sign saying no mobile phones so if you chose to ignore the orders of a Government Officer you deserve all you get. On return the security staff were all positive - despite the queue - a little longer than I would normally hope for. But with only one flight in a 3 hour block, I suppose you don't get cheap flights with Business class service. Additionally, the staff seemed very helpful towards the unfortunate folks booked on the EZY to BCN which had a major tech problem, providing regular updates. I take your points on the decor - it is a little dull and both airside and groundside tiolets had not been serviced for 5 hours and could have done with refreshing.
Regarding the economics of DSA, (my previous post asking for why it should be left to rot was deleted??) I would still maintain that had it been allowed to develop into an airport when the RAF moved out in 1995 we would now have a very busy airport in that they coukld have surfed the wave of the low cost expansion rather than being on the coat tails of it. However, it now has significantly more traffic than HUY and as LBA is now approaching capacity at peak hours there may be more scope for more expansion. Judging by the number of cars in the car park they are doing something right.

2planks, looks like EZY are leaving after December by most accounts. The flights look to have done quite well, but the Amsterdam has had load factors of as low as 50% during the summer and around 60% at the most. People in Easyjet say yields are not too great, and that the aircraft would be better used in either expansion at MAN/LGW or on the continent.

Could be that they agreed to do the flights in order to show VAS that it was growing so they could sell their 65% shares in the airports.

says who exactly? Doesn't seem two minutes since "those in the know" were saying that easyjet would be pulling out of DSA in October,i'd expect a decline in flights over winter,but who says there wont be an increase in flights from spring onwards,apart from those wanting to pull the airport down for there own reasons?

No ones said they were leaving in October, not that ive seen/heard.

I guess we will just have to wait and see, i suspect it wont take long as the flights would have to go on sale soon if they are to continue.

a marketing ploy!
 

Nobody knows for certain of course, but one thing that did always puzzle me was the strange 'term' of the timetable? Why 8 or seven and a half months or whatever it was? It occurs to me that it was strange that there was no real commitment for something a bit more substantial than a summer and just half a winter? I do not think there was any way that EZY could have been brought in for such a period to demonstrate to VAS that DSA was growing, as I think that they're far too savvy to be taken in by that, but I do wonder if Peel gave EZY a really good deal for that period (Fly One Get One Free?:p)as some sort of 'marketing ploy' to a potential investor ...i.e. to demonstrate to such as VAS the potential of the airport that if you do get the right operators/flights into DSA then they will be used, as it seems has happened to a great extent with EZY.

doncaster robin hood
 

Hi swinging monkey

sorry about your ghastly experience at the hands of useless jobs worths,

proves what I always thought,its grim up north:ugh:

gdlsf
I would imagine that most enthusiasts from "this neck of the woods" think that DSA should have never been allowed to happen at all. This area was quite adequately served by MAN (long haul), EMA, LBA and HUY. It was a political decision because they thought a long runway would achieve a lot of business from outside of the UK. I think it has been proved that they were wrong.

If of course they were adequately served you'd have to ask why HUY has only seen a 3% increase in pax this year regardless of runway length. DSA has seen a 27% increase.

It would appear then on simple 'most enthusiast' counting numbers stuff that the airport that's not needed in Yorkshire is Humberside with such a woefull performance, regardless of runway length.

Please don't start a DSA v HUY knocking each other debate. Most people want both to succeed. There's enough of this in MAN and LPL threads.