So Peel, who almost ran a successful airport into the ground and cost jobs for local peopl are what you're basing your argument on? Are you saying we shouldn't have a local airport because you think its not financially viable. Which it quite clearly was before Peel took over or are you saying it just because of your political bias?
"who almost ran a successful airport into the ground"
Form wiki:
"Passenger numbers peaked in 2006 when the airport was used by 917,963 passengers. However, since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, numbers declined to 130,911 in 2017 before starting to rise again in 2018. A side effect of the crisis saw a number of airline bankruptcies or mergers, greatly reducing the number of potential operators for the airport to pursue. Those that merged consolidated at the larger regional airports, leading to the likes of Newcastle and Leeds expanding, whilst local airports such as Durham Tees Valley continued to struggle for several years."
Lets look at passenger numbers under peel, and since Lord Airport took over.
As you can see above, when Peel took over the airport in 2003, they reversed its declining fortunes and invested in the airport. in 2004 & 2005, passenger numbers saw double digit growth of 11.9 & 14.1% and they oversaw passenger numbers peaking at the airport's record high of 917,963 passengers in 2006.
2007 saw the global crisis hit, well, the entire planet. Air travel was the last thing on many peoples minds and those still travelling tended to do so from larger airports as airlines hedged their risk by focusing on regional hubs instead of smaller airlines. Peel had absolutely nothing they could have done to prevent that.
Look at how big those bars are, and then compare it to 2018 onward when Lord Airport took over. Yes we had covid, but we're still talking about unrealistic numbers. Newcastle airport is pretty much back to pre-pandemic figures. Newcastle airport prior to the financial crash was 5.6m passengers so even they were busier before then.
Peel were sold the airport because it was making a loss. They improved passenger numbers to figures that are a twinkle in lord airport's eye, and it still lost money. It is losing money now - airlines have to be subsidised to do routes and we have no idea what theyre getting for this as its all behind closed doors due to the purposefully complicated ownership structure.
But one thing for sure is that it is absolutely not more packed out for 8 months of the year now than it was during Peel's ownership. It just physically cant have been. There are only a few flights a day and even if everyone turned up at the start of the day, and lollygagged until the last flight of the day, it wouldn't be that busy.
Any "successful" period the airport has enjoyed was under Peel's ownership, and people hated them because they told the truth - that the airport is not long term viable. The current much fan-fared passenger numbers are basically in line with Peel's crappest years.
If its packed out now, its an even worse outlook for lord airport because where are the other 780k passengers a year going to go he is forecasting are going to suddenly arrive? Peel had capacity for them somehow mind, despite your claims.