White Heather
Well-Known Member
It is just beyond belief whats going on at LBA. we are talking about the city of leeds (3rd largest city and the 2nd financial hub of england) with an ever expanding city centre with new buildings going up 24/7 at the moment inc some new 25 floor plus soon to rise, and west yorks in general(4th pop). Lba should be a 2 or 3 aircraft base each for both tui and tc and the airport should be attracting at least 8million pax per year with the likes of AF,LH,SAS to major European hubs! Manchester airport is a big problem but I will say it again, the main issue is the infrastructure at Lba and esp the runway, that is the big big draw back! Most cant face the fact that's the main issue, and until something major is done, Lba will always remain the way it is! It will grow a little bit each year but other airports will leave it behind!
We can moan all we like about the runway Fight2Win but the odd thing is that so far, successive LBA owners and management teams have all said the same thing - that being that a longer runway is not viable. When cost v benefit is taken into account the finances just don't stack up and should they attempt to extend it, the negativity stirred up in local communities would be huge. Various managers at LBA have all said that the runway extension will NOT stop airlines such as TUI or TCX pulling out when the going gets tough. Nor will it result in LBA getting lots of nice new long haul routes, and the reason for that is quite simple. Manchester. It is like the Black Hole of Northern Aviation, sucking in most if not all the long haul traffic for the North West and Yorkshire. Based on your theory, Liverpool should also do better than it does, but it too tends to lose out on the Inclusive Tour market (to Manchester again) and it is largely reliant on two airlines - Ryanair and Easyjet, just as we are to Ryanair and Jet2. Liverpool has slightly more passengers than LBA but there again, it was piling up passengers with unrestricted operations when LBA was still fighting with one hand behind its back due to night time closure. In recent years we have seen LBA exceeding LPL in some months during the summer. Unfortunately for us, Easyjet operate all year round whereas Jet2 tend to vastly reduce their flying programme in winter from all airports, so LBA loses out in the winter months. Jet2's decision is financial - nothing to do with LBA, its weather or the length of the runway. They reduce their flying at all their bases.
Sometimes we just have to accept that some of the people that run airports or own them, know their business. If they don't see that spending huge sums on a runway extension (or changing the touch down point) will pay for itself any time soon, due to the presence of MAN, then it won't happen.