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I’m not missing any point, you’re trying to compare with routes that are more utilised and hence can absorb stops. Particularly your comparison with East Midlands parkway which is on the midlands main line to London which offers people in the area an ability to hop on services to London without having to go to Nottingham, Loughborough etc first. The line you are talking about is a lightly used secondary line between Lincoln and Doncaster, if you think that people will be jumping on it to visit the wildlife park or airport you’re deluding yourself.
So just tackling some of those points. Firstly the Wildlife Park, how many visitors would switch from road to rail to visit the attraction? Keep in mind that the line currently sees just 5 passenger trains in each direction between Doncaster and Peterborough, and that rail fares can get very expensive very quickly for families / groups unless booked well in advance. Given that many visits to the park may well be spur of the moment visits for families and groups based on the weather, school holidays etc, how likely are they to risk switching to the train and it's walk-up prices? Plus being effectively a branch line, most people are going to have to make one or more connections and find parking at their originating station. This will add even more cost and time on journeys that might already be a couple of hours for many. You seem to be expecting in excess of 10%, which frankly I think is way too optimistic.
It’s not even that, it screams of naivety and a bit of commercial ineptitude from this career council worker.
Totally agree. These reports will be intended to provide the South Yorkshire Mayor with positive propaganda in the hope he will be duped into believing the airport will one day be profitable. It won't be the last. There'll be all sorts.of spin and rumours designed to influence the outcome of his independent advice and to heap pressure on him to hand over the cash. All smoke snd mirrors. All a careful play on words designed to mislead without actually lying.
Yes the phrasing ‘targeting 5 airlines’ implies that they are in a good bargaining position. They are NOT. They might have some success attracting one or two, but just assuming because you have a runway and terminal that you will start seeing airlines signing up is naive and inaccurate. The sort of work needed to see it through is far beyond the capability or finances of the council.
Not a clue. The Eastern commercial director has been getting involved on LinkedIn but I understand he’s not the most astute and probably has personal reasons for wanting DSA to succeed being a local. The council claim they’ve been fielding interest from airlines for the past year or so, but they also claimed that there was private sector interest in the airport and that came to 0 so no reason to believe that this airline interest is tangible. I’ve said it previously but airlines will talk to them to see what they’re planning because the airlines need to be ready to react, this could be by putting aircraft into there but it also could be to react to anticipated competition and I’m really not confident that the council would be able to tell the difference.
The car mechanic has had another rant against what he likes to call the media pouring ‘cold water’ on the idea of reopening DSA. Then goes on to talk about a collection of airports that have over the years almost all become private sector led, even MAG is propped up by foreign investment and returns profits to its shareholders. It is not the same. LBA is 100% private owned and as such has rights to challenge any attempt to undermine its competitive edge by using public subsidy thinly veiled as ‘loans’ to distort the market,
Their argument is that they intend to generate investor confidence by proving the viability of the airport, they then claim that the reason they couldn’t attract private sector investment was due to the head of lease terms. So which one is it? Oliver Coppard has said more than once over the years that it is the private sector that should run airports. All of those listed have been developed over decades.
Ironically the mechanic and the followers fail to mention LPL and its success but continue to bash every other airport.. ironic LPL is peel owned and run.
I feel like your clinching at straws..
How is Oliver Coppard in the position to judge? And FYI it was his predecessor who refused to help Peel out financially because there was no possibility of profitability by using their own metrics, £20million was a high risk investment for them…
God there's so much nonsense spouted about Peel messing DSA up. It's all just to deflect blame from politicians who refused to pour more cash into Peel's DSA fund to stop it going under. How ironic.
Peel spent a fortune (private money) with incentives for airlines to operate from DSA - but when you are paying someone to operate it's hard to make money. As incentive periods came to an end FR and EZY clearly could not make money without the subsidy and pulled out followed by Stobart/EI. Peels strategic blunder was to think that an airport in that location would be mega successful and there was no recovering from that whatever management team they employed. They spent £284m(?) on it - I think if that were me and I'd built it to fail as per the popular narrative on the campaign site - I could have done it much cheaper than that!!! As is alluded to elsewhere on here - the experts were right. The fundamental reason which is rarely, if at all mentioned it failed is the lack of sufficient local catchment to sustain other than a few holiday flights, in the middle of other close by airports. I mention LBA as it's the one that the campaign site loves to hate for some reason which has an inferior infrastructure to DSA and the very much exaggerated but occasional weather issues, poor access, overcrowded terminal etc. but has thrived - warts and all - because it has a very significant catchment area right on it's doorstep and like the folk living around DSA want to fly from their local airport. The stated plan (or that bit which has been made public) is to take traffic from LBA but it will be exceedingly difficult for the above reason.
And TUI will not be there in spring 2026 if indeed it opens then, if reports are true that they have said themselves that their 2026 offer is already allocated - as are their available aircraft and DSA doesn't feature. There is understandable impatience growing with folk wanting to book 2026 holidays which will increase. FlyDoncaster/CDC should really come clean and put an unambiguous slant on what's happening otherwise there is bound to be huge disappointment when the penny drops which amongst other things is only going to generate further vitriol towards surrounding airports.
I can see TUI getting pissed off actually, because it could undermine consumer confidence. I understand that some of the major high street retail outlets have been instructed to say that they will have no flights or holiday on sale from Doncaster in 2026 because I imagine if people are waiting for DSA to reopen it could have a tangible impact on bookings! It would be wise of the Council to be honest but they aren’t going to be wise when there are elections around the corner unfortunately.
