According to https://flood-warning-information.service.gov.uk/station/5183 the river Irthing is at the same level as the highest ever recorded by that station (2015 storm Desmond) so I'm not sure the water has anywhere to drain to. Carlisle flight training offices are flooded. Local roads are closed. If you do twitter try searching it for "A6071 Irthing Bridge". It looks to me as though local to the airport has been particularly badly hit.

Have Loganair got a suitable aircraft to fly a Med. route and is the runway and terminal capable of handling a larger aircraft than those currently used?

An EMB-145 could probably do the Med, Largest a/c is restricted to Bae.146 size by planning conditions.

Given Embraer E170/175 etc and then the short take off performance of the A220, all in the samev' size range of the BAE146 / Rj100.
IF you recall Lcy started with Draconian restrictions, but as traffic and demand grew...
I don't see Planning depts objecting to flights bringing inward tourists or siding the local economy, besides isn't part of the usable strip painted out like , Oban?.

Also it's still longer than Vagar and that takes A319/A320 neo..
Suffers horrific weather , but before the extension, it was only 1299m , there are videos of smaller 737's and DC9 I think on you tube .

So there must be hope for CAX?

Stobart faced years of legal challenge before getting permission to re-develop the airport - I doubt whether any planning change would go unchallenged.

Before we get too carried away, anybody got an example of when this model (regional airliner from small UK regional airport to the Med) has been successful?

Never thought of that - maybe I should have put "mainland UK"! :ok:

Airport open again this morning.

Closed again now

They got a 12 month extension to use the old tower, as the new one was built with the windows without any angle, and they need to be replaced.

I would have thought that an E145 could get to the Mediterranean from CAX from a field-performance point of view (whether with a full pax load or not, I don't know).

The far bigger challenge would be the fare per seat which would have to be charged to make a profit on that size of aircraft on such a long sector, and the unfavourable comparisons it would draw with the fares on offer from A320/737 LCCs flying from bigger airports.

Exactly, and who would be interested in operating such a route?

SWBKCB said:
Could you post a link to this planning constraint, as I couldn't find it?

It was in press reports a number of years ago.

Ther terminal certainly isn't configured for anything larger.

Well if there is no current 'planning condition' (as you said originally), I expect that the media item may have been referring to the situation then imposed by the CAA with a restriction on the OLD runway, which off the top of my head was max size in the region of 12-13 Tonnes for commercial operations. But of course with the newly laid, and compliant runway, this will no longer apply, so larger aircraft can use CAX commercially.

Whether the terminal is up to it is a different question, but I do not see why the odd larger charter or two, or occasional diversion could not be coped with as it is, one at a time, and subject to the opening hours, IAPs etc.

No - don't think it was an operational constraint, I'm sure it was a planning condition following one of the many legal challenges to the re-development. I suppose it may have been overturned at some point, but given the level of local opposition, I'd be surprised if it's gone unreported.