In its favour..space and a great long runway!
If Teesside can work with massive investment..who is to say DSA can’t?

If the mayor's money supply to MME suddenly stopped... I'm wondering what might happen long term.

They are competing in the same market - along with the other considerations, is there room for two?

A lot of the MME money is already spent or committed. The arguement is that the public money is invested to re-establish the airport and encourage customers like Willis, Airborne Colours, Draken to invest and along with the investment in the southside business park means that the public money gets repaid out of profits and becomes self sustaining, along with the benefits to the region of increased jobs etc. DSA seems to be copying this playbook.

The question for both is whether there is sufficient market to support the airport once the public money stops.

Teesside wasn't dead when the mayor bought it. There were a number of active flights and money making companies on site. The airport was also fully equipped if not antiquated and fully staffed.

Plus it is a lot smaller so isn’t likely to be as much of a drain on resources. Weren’t Esken a private sector operator appointed to run Teesside until they had a quick change of heart and pulled out? Is there anything to stop this happening in this case, only this time with the council not actually owning the airport just the lease?

Im sure it’ll all be part of the detail being thrashed out now. Too much risk aversion from the public sector might prevent a signing on the dotted line.

MME is completely public owned with most of the debt sat with the public sector, as such the public own the asset.
As I understand Doncaster is on a lease, which im guessing we don't know the actual terms of!
MME on paper has only cost around £14m when looking at the balance sheet.

MME was an established airport with a legacy carrier (KLM) and several incumbent businesses/operations that create a minimum base to work with, when taken over.
​​Doncaster has nothing pretty much and the £140m is not going to go far once they have invested in the hardware and staff to get the place up an running. Unfortunately I just can't see it working.
FPOs are estblished at East Mids, ad hoc freight is covered by East Mids and Stansted.
Legacy carriers are in at Humberside, Norwich and Leeds.
Low Costs are firmly established at Stansted, East Midlands and Leeds.
If you want to make it viable I would say you need double the amount they have to spend to allow for time to build from nothing.

Double of £140m... ie £280m is a lot of *public* money to reopen an airport that has been struggling for years. That kind of money can buy a large amount of alternative infrastructure

Given the woefully inadequate state of public transport together with the road and rail infrastructure that everyone uses, wasting £140m on resurecting a failed commercial airport looks to be a frivalous waste of public money.

Not targetting DSA here; that goes for the whole of the UK.

My point is that DSA and MME are competing in the same market, not just in terms of catchment areas but in terms of available aircraft from airlines etc and attracting other aviation related industries, logistics etc.

I'm assuming that the £138m includes a cover for losses as they build up anticipated business as per a costed business plan. The details are obviously commercially sensitive.

The £138m is out of a gain share pot over I think 30 years. They are allowed and will have to borrow to front up some of the capital start-up costs, with the debt being reduced by the annual funding income, so sounds like they do not anticipate the running costs post setup swallowing all of the funding. I'm assuming that they will have a break clause to get out if it does not go to plan. The major pieces of equipment will still have resale value.

They also released that an experienced operator had offered £100m to Peel to purchase the airport (and maybe surrounding area), which had been rejected.

That was the Middle Eastern group, who were questioned about their credibility and sources of funding. Oliver Coppard appears to be contradicting himself quite a bit.

His predecessor could have saved the airport by investing £20million in exchange for equity, but chose not to because he thought the business was not likely to be profitable. Thats been spun into a myth that Peel refused to ‘open their books’. Thats not what was said in the meeting minutes.

It would make more sense to have an airport on each side of the Pennines, rather than one stuck on top of a hill in the cloud with poor access and no cross runway.

So why has the airport stuck on a hill done so well even before DSA closed?

Easy one that:
1/ Catchment - Leeds is the 2nd most populous district in the UK after Birmingham followed by North Yorkshire in 3rd (districts not counties)
2/ A very well run home-based airline in Jet2
3/ Inbound and Outbound traffic

Leeds City Region population has the 2nd highest propensity to fly in the North of England behind Manchester City Region, North Yorkshire inclusive. Liverpool 3rd. South Yorkshire is quite far down the list.

Simple answer... Jet2. Without the number of aircraft they base and the choice of destinations they offer Leeds would have not have had the same success.
CAA's own figures for 2022 there are still 4.8m+ passengrrs from Yorkshire & Humberside (3.7m), North East (0.4m),the
East Midlands (0.7m) & East of England (0.4m) leaking across the Pennines to MAN - they are some of the people who will use DSA if it can get an operator of standing installed to encourage airlines like Easy, Ryanair, TUI, Wizz and who knows maybe even Jet 2 to take some of that market that likes to avoid LBA.

Big IF - who's left after those you've listed?! And what can V2 offer over V1? This to me is the central question around the re-opening. What's on offer that ends up with a different result

LBA had 4 million pax in 2023, making it 13th busiest airport in the UK. A long way down from the biggest LCC airports in the UK. Compared to LCCs at Manchester, Jet2 are probably seeing good but not exceptional economies of scale at LBA. Jet2 do not follow an "outsource everything to the cheapest bidder" approach - this increases in-house costs and works only where there are decent economies of scale.
I'm dubious that the south Yorkshire via DSA market could provide those economies of scale without substantially cannibalising DSA or EMA

In fairness what you say has merit, indeed it was the reasoning behind building DSA in the first place. How many of those 4.8 million are using one or two specific services though, or are they travelling across to MAN because of the sheer range of destinations on offer there, and those 4.8m are important to the airlines currently flying from MAN because it makes up a useful percentage of the loads across all flights departing MAN?

Think the point was that they couldn’t pinpoint a significant focussed demand for destinations. That is the challenge anyone who operates reopened airport will face. Not to mention that squeeze on slots across the Mediterranean which is the bread and butter of any airport like DSA.