Doncaster Sheffield Airport Could Permanently Close

[Guest busdriver1]

1 hour ago, ECCOnoob said:

Why exactly do we need one?  I think its more than a reasonable suggestion that if there was  such a pressing and necessary demand it wouldn't be failing

 

Where is the surge of passengers going to come from every single day to make it it sufficiently commercially viable?   What exactly is so lacking which is not more than already and better covered by other airport operations within a short radius? Where are all these Airlines desperately, waiting, queueing up, ready to move in to start operations going to come from?  How is the long-term trend for jet travel predicted over the next few decades? What is the market shift going to be? How will the future developments in travel and technology affect the long-term viability of such a airport?  

 

It's really not that simple as some childish approach to "...I want therefore I have.."

 

Yes I agree that there should be more levelling up of the northern regions but it has to be done properly.  'levelling up' is sod all to do with whether we keep a failing budget airport or not. For goodness sake it is far more nuanced and complex. It has to take into consideration the blindingly obvious fact of where wealth is located, where private corporations want to be operating, where the biggest areas of population are located, what those local people actually need in their areas (very different from just fulfiling their vanity projects or deluded pipedreams).  Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, whatever infrastructure, facility, operation or service does get built, it has to be something that the local people will be prepared to use frequently with sufficient spending of their own money in.

 

Incientally, given the constant put downs, critiques and whinging which take place on here every time any new infrastructure project, commerce, stores, operation or building is announced, one has to question whether any 'levelling up' would even be appreciated if it does get built around here.   

 

Fancy shops open =  it's all too expensive. It's just the same stuff as Primark and Poundland

 

New distribution/industrial park gets built = wouldn't get out of bed for those jobs......

 

New housing development gets built = just cheap tacky boxes for Poshos with more money than sense....

 

New leisure facilities get built = who's gonna pay that for a pint?  I'm not eating all that silly hipster food....

 

New Road network gets built =  How dare you be killing the planet! Cars are evil!

 

New rail network gets built = think of the trees! How dare my village/street/town be inconvenienced all that construction disruption! What a white elephant! Who wants to go there anyway?  The fares will all be expensive!

 

Round and round it goes.

Who do you think you are? 

You come on here making sensible points......

Is there no end to this madness 🙂 

[Baron99 809]

There was a mention on Radio Sheffield, (unfounded rumour), that Jet2 were thinking of buying DSA & using it as their own personal hub?

[Anna B 1,417]

9 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

Why exactly do we need one?  I think its more than a reasonable suggestion that if there was  such a pressing and necessary demand it wouldn't be failing

 

Where is the surge of passengers going to come from every single day to make it it sufficiently commercially viable?   What exactly is so lacking which is not more than already and better covered by other airport operations within a short radius? Where are all these Airlines desperately, waiting, queueing up, ready to move in to start operations going to come from?  How is the long-term trend for jet travel predicted over the next few decades? What is the market shift going to be? How will the future developments in travel and technology affect the long-term viability of such a airport?  

 

It's really not that simple as some childish approach to "...I want therefore I have.."

 

Yes I agree that there should be more levelling up of the northern regions but it has to be done properly.  'levelling up' is sod all to do with whether we keep a failing budget airport or not. For goodness sake it is far more nuanced and complex. It has to take into consideration the blindingly obvious fact of where wealth is located, where private corporations want to be operating, where the biggest areas of population are located, what those local people actually need in their areas (very different from just fulfiling their vanity projects or deluded pipedreams).  Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, whatever infrastructure, facility, operation or service does get built, it has to be something that the local people will be prepared to use frequently with sufficient spending of their own money in.

 

Incientally, given the constant put downs, critiques and whinging which take place on here every time any new infrastructure project, commerce, stores, operation or building is announced, one has to question whether any 'levelling up' would even be appreciated if it does get built around here.   

 

Fancy shops open =  it's all too expensive. It's just the same stuff as Primark and Poundland

 

New distribution/industrial park gets built = wouldn't get out of bed for those jobs......

 

New housing development gets built = just cheap tacky boxes for Poshos with more money than sense....

 

New leisure facilities get built = who's gonna pay that for a pint?  I'm not eating all that silly hipster food....

 

New Road network gets built =  How dare you be killing the planet! Cars are evil!

 

New rail network gets built = think of the trees! How dare my village/street/town be inconvenienced all that construction disruption! What a white elephant! Who wants to go there anyway?  The fares will all be expensive!

 

Round and round it goes.

'Build it and they will come.'

 

Believe it or not, a lot of people live in the North of England. 

Heathrow Airport is at full capacity, and needs to expand.

Why not build a second Heathrow in the North? Business will follow. We have a ripe, ready made underused workforce, land to build and expand, and, with an international airport, road and rail links and a major port in Hull, we would have the ability to reach markets in Asia and the far east, South America, as well as Northern Europe. We would have the capacity to compliment / compete with London.     

 

One of the reasons the south east is full to bursting, house prices rising etc, is because International businessmen and investors  fly into Heathrow and never venture North of Watford. They've no idea what they're missing or the opportunities that exist in the North. We need something to entice them.

 

The BBC sent half of its workforce to Salford, built studios etc, and in spite of southerners  being very hesitant at first, it brought about the complete regeneration of that area and is thriving. Sheffield, so I'm told, is a digital hub with much expertise and talent. Film makers for companies such as HBO and the plethora of digital channels also need more digital craftsmen and space for studios and filmmaking / gaming facilities. They already use locations up here.  There are also new industries just developing, in ways we can't imagine. 

 

Even the government itself will soon be homeless and needs to relocate....

If we live in a global economy, we have to make it easier to attract investment.  

 

[ECCOnoob 1,050]

2 hours ago, Anna B said:

 

Why not build a second Heathrow in the North? 

We have one. It's called Manchester Airport. 

It's a 40 mile drive away and has its own direct train routes from Sheffield, Meadowhall, Doncaster, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, and occasional ones stopping at little Dore station.  There is already future plans to link up the airport station with HS2 which could get passengers from the airport into the East Midlands in around 30 minutes or even as far down into Central London in less than an hour.

 

It is already well established with multiple long-haul routes into to North America, Canada, the Middle East and parts of Asia.  Just exactly how many and how frequently are us Northerners jetting off long haul to desperately require another large airport in the region?

 

As for the cheapo European package holiday flights once a year (which is what the vast majority of people around here will be travelling on) there is already a multitude of smaller airports in the region to cater for such need. All of them are within a short travelling radius from Sheffield.

 

I ask again, what exactly is so lacking that absolutely requires that South Yorkshire must also have its own Airport?    There are 25 passenger operational airports just in England alone. Yes some are bursting at the seams but there are others whose stats show they are averaging less than 100 passengers a day. 

 

Certainly on paper, that does not covince me we need to be building more airports in fact, it shows that we probably have far too many being used completely ineffectively. Spreading out the flights levels might be a more realistic solution but there will inevitably need to be trimming the fat of the obvious excessive and underused ones. At present, DSA seems ripe for that.

Edited July 24, 2022 by ECCOnoob

[Guest busdriver1]

6 hours ago, Anna B said:

'Build it and they will come.'

 

It has been built and In their droves they have NOT come. Otherwise we would not be even thinking about shutting this unnecessary capacity. 

[Man in Crete 104]

Ok so economics play apart same as they do with public transport…..and yet some of those who argue for the closure of their so called white elephant are missing a huge point

manchester airport has a max number of flights in/ out of 61/ hour. There is no chance of adding a third runway or giving way to night flights

hence with the propensity of people wishing to fly increasing despite the eco Marxists saying we should cycle everywhere, Manchester is almost at over capacity .
 regardless current staffing problems it was already a s*** hole in my view . Customers are treat like cattle proverbially speaking and unless you have the joy of using Emirates first class etc I doubt any discerning passenger will say “wow that was good”

I seem to think TPE have withdrawn direct rail services and you now have to drag cases and kids across Piccadilly that’s if the trains are running. Hs2 also won’t help the majority of current flyers in the north

Soooo in my ideal futuristic world DSA would be better marketed ,would speculate to accumulate, would rid itself of Peel Holdings and become more competitive on landing fees etc and if the flights were there then yes the people will come in numbers in excess of the 1.5m already using. 

 

 

[HeHasRisen 3,410]

Its a cross platform transfer at Piccadilly if you go on the Liverpool train from Sheffield tbh, so thats half the fast trains.

 

If airlines were desperate to go and use DSA they would already be using it.

[ECCOnoob 1,050]

1 hour ago, Man in Crete said:

 

Soooo in my ideal futuristic world DSA would be better marketed ,would speculate to accumulate, would rid itself of Peel Holdings and become more competitive on landing fees etc and if the flights were there then yes the people will come in numbers in excess of the 1.5m already using. 

 

 

Economics does not just play a part, it is the primary factor.  The future you are suggesting could take decades and will only work on the  scenario that passenger numbers will continue to escalate the way they are. Given the shift towards alternative methods of transport, high speed rail, more social consciousness regards sustainability, the dramatic increases in home based working and reductions in business travel etc..  it is not beyond the realms of possibility that short haul flights particularly may start to decline.

 

Those who have any sort of green agenda may well concede that transatlantic or Asia travel has no options but to fly- but they would be more than willing to take greener surface transportation for places say in Europe. Even more so if opportunities to do so increase over time and if it can ultimately be deemed easier and on par time wise compared to travelling to and going through all the the prolonged and challenging airport protocols pre and post departure.

 

Also I think there needs to be some real context  as to these passenger numbers. Yes DSA has a passenger flow (pre-covid) of around 1.5 million but that is nothing if you look at the bigger picture. I don't think people realise just how far behind that is compared to it's main rivals. For example, Leeds Bradford Airport which I'm sure many would consider is still a 'tinpot' operation handled approaching fouŕ million passengers in 2019. Liverpool Airport (despite being in the catchment of Manchester) still handled over 5 million passengers, as did East Midlands Airport.  Birmingham airport is over 12 million. Then of course we have Manchester itself which is over 28 million.

 

After 17 + years in operation, DSA is still pulling in less than half of even Leeds-Bradford, it's lost one of its main route operators and the only remaining one with any substance is a seasonal charter holiday airline whose own passenger numbers, even before Covid, were mostly year-on-year declining.   The figures for Doncaster have not been consistent as even back in 2007 it

had a peak of over a million passengers but just four years later was down to around 600,000. It took them three solid years to get their passenger numbers back up to over a million and even then we're still showing less than 1/3 third compared to some of the nearest rivals.

 

Another big factor was that DSA repeatedly missed out breaking the market in the obviously popular  budget carriers like Ryanair, EasyJet and Jet2 who chose to establish their operations at other airports in the region and are very unlikely to shift unless less DSA whores itself out (which of course it can't afford to do as it is already making massive losses)

 

The fact is we have to many airports already. If one is far busier than others, then yes, the work needs to be spread around. But I simply do not accept that they will all have a sustainable future and it is very clear where the weak links are.  

[Anna B 1,417]

11 hours ago, busdriver1 said:

It has been built and In their droves they have NOT come. Otherwise we would not be even thinking about shutting this unnecessary capacity. 

D /S is a small local airport that mostly does local and short haul flights to European destinations etc as far as I'm aware, but people now want to fly further afield - America, South America.  Bali, China, Australia to name just a few, but that requires longer runways that only D/S can supply and has the space to develop into a major international airport which can service the whole of the North of England and much of the Midlands. 

 

The only alternative at present is Manchester, on the other side of the Pennines (and unreachable when the winter weather closees in) and frankly is well past its sell by date, and an absolute dump that shames us compared to other International airports in the world. It hardly creates a good impression, with it's 'no spitting' and 'do not attack the staff' notices.

 

Heathrow London is at full capacity and several airlines are looking for new bases further afield.

A redeveloped D/S would be ideal.

It's about time the government came good with its 'levelling up' promises and started to put some proper investment into the North.

We're fed up with everything being about the crowded, congested south east which gets far more than its fair share at the expense of everyone else and where no one can even afford to live anymore. We've been waiting for cross rail for years, and now won't even get the Northern bit of HS2 which surprise surprise is going to Petre out at Birmingham.  

Edited July 24, 2022 by Anna B

[HeHasRisen 3,410]

19 minutes ago, Anna B said:

D /S is a small local airport that mostly does local and short haul flights to European destinations etc as far as I'm aware, but people now want to fly further afield - America, South America.  Bali, China, Australia to name just a few, but that requires longer runways that only D/S can supply and has the space to develop into a major international airport which can service the whole of the North of England and much of the Midlands. 

The airport has been open over 15 years, yes? This runway has existed for the same period.

 

Yet the airport offers no long haul flights as far as I know.

 

It had already been "built", and they have not "come".

[ECCOnoob 1,050]

56 minutes ago, Anna B said:

 

 

The only alternative at present is Manchester, on the other side of the Pennines (and unreachable when the winter weather closees in) and frankly is well past its sell by date, and an absolute dump that shames us compared to other International airports in the world. It hardly creates a good impression, with it's 'no spitting' and 'do not attack the staff' notices.

 

 

Have you never heard of places like Gatwick or Birmingham or Cardiff or Newcastle which already have established long haul routes and existing suitable runways to increase their flights elsewhere.

 

Incidentally, Manchester might be labelled bogeyman number one in the papers right now but it's certainly not well past its sell-by date. In fact it's gone through a multi-million pound renovation and extension of its main terminal

 

When there is snow on The Snake Pass there are alternative routes to Manchester including the M62.  Life doesn't shut down just because there is snow on one main road. Let alone the train connections which I've discussed several times earlier. So let's stop with the dramatic like "it's unreachable".

 

It is far from being "the only solution". In fact given DSA struggled to attract the big budget Airlines flying frequently to Europe what serious hope do you think they're going to have of suddenly getting commitments from airlines like Emirates, Etihad, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic or Qantas.

 

Its pipe dream stuff which is not what we should be peeing away any sort of levelling up investment on.  Goodness sake, if we are going to do something it needs to be a project which is actually required, viable and which people will use.  Not some desperate vanity project trying to keep up with the neighbours by providing something which is already well and better catered nearby.

[Anna B 1,417]

2 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

Incidentally, Manchester might be labelled bogeyman number one in the papers right now but it's certainly not well p sake, if we are going to do something it needs to be a project which is actually required, viable and which people will use.  Not some desperate vanity project trying to keep up with the neighbours by providing something which is already well and better catered nearby.

So, what do you suggest?

Edited July 24, 2022 by Anna B