Seems Chadwick is on a narrative control offensive right now. Constant posting of AI slop designed to quell the growing cynicism over the project. Yesterday he was confidently telling people that there’ll be no impact on Sandtoft, in spite of the fact that since DSA closed Sandtoft has become unlicensed, has no ATZ and have opposed the CAS on the grounds that there doesn’t seem to have been any consideration made to mitigate this in the ACP. He simply replied to someone saying ‘well it was fine before so it’ll be ok now’.
He’s now saying ‘all airline negotiations are confidential, the website says they’re in negotiations’. He’s mentioned TUI, Jet2 and Ryanair and his they ‘aren’t exactly going to complete these negotiations on SaveDSA’. He’s right of course, but he’s being presumptuous in dropping names that these outfits are interested, we know Ryanair are skeptical and outlined why it’s a tough sell, Jet2 are of a similar position and I don’t believe TUI are in growth mode at the minute.
I suppose like everything to do with this, they operate in a bubble and fail to consider the macro environment. Not once for instance has he mentioned the stalled funding, the Peel sweep of Haworth where they now have controlling shares and ultimately own all of the land surrounding the airport. He fails to understand how this has strengthened Peels hand and weakened CDC/SYMCAs when it comes to negotiating the terrible lease that was signed, something he’s also careful not to mention.
He’s also posted an article, presumably in the YP business supplement, written by Christian Foster basically regurgitating the same positive message, only Chadwick called it a ‘horses mouth’ update. It’s not a horses mouth update though, because Fosters job is to talk up the project, as project director you would not expect him to say ‘there’s no funding yet, the lease renegotiations appear to have stalled, oh and the airlines we’ve spoken to have only shown tentative interest in our plans and they’re using the opportunity to size up what we’re actually going to offer so they can plan accordingly’ is he? The ‘horses mouth’ would be strong airline rumours, there are none currently. Same goes for freight ‘Yorkshire has no air freight’, but last time I checked there was no hard border between Yorkshire and East Midlands, Yorkshire is served by air freight, why else does he think all these fulfilment centres are popping up everywhere? It just means that the air freight operators, on the whole, don’t need to fly directly into Yorkshire.
I suppose the more he and Chadwick double down and posts all these updates, the more it shows their nervousness about what’s really happening. ‘You wouldn’t buy fire fighting equipment or radar if you thought the airport wouldn’t reopen’, welcome to the work of political posturing!
