Plymouth Airport

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When I was last down I couldn't help but come across petitioners and signs against the selling off of the airport.

I can sort of understand it...Exeter Airport is only a half hour or so's drive away. I've never been a regular 'flyer' though, so I dunno.

Sutton Harbour Holdings co. (the owners of the airport) are a firm of developers, when they bought the airport they only had one aim in mind, to run the airport down and build on it. Shame how loud that money talks.

Plymouth needs an airport i say otherwise buisness's will suffer as a result including Argyle

Iggy wrote:

Sutton Harbour Holdings co. (the owners of the airport) are a firm of developers, when they bought the airport they only had one aim in mind, to run the airport down and build on it. Shame how loud that money talks.

Quite right Iggy, does it remind you of any other business in the City

Leaving the money side out of it and the obvious profit motive over community need I find distasteful, Plymouth does need more housing, not more airplanes. There's little demand for it, although the Cork thing was handy once upon a time.

I don't fly regularly at all, and believe, as in life, it's the journey that counts, not the destination. If one spends too much time travelling for work, may I humbly suggest moving closer to one's workplace... radical, I know.
As for the London Peter Jonesesque 'the city needs it' routine... no it doesn't, but the second home owners certainly would appreciate it... and the more highly subsidised it is, the better they'll like it.

The second home owners aren't in Plymouth and don't fly here. They are mostly down near Padstow and fly in to Newquay.

As a percentage, there are more second homes in the South Hams than anywhere else in the country. And the airport is on the edge of the South Hams.

They fly in to Exeter. If they all flew in to Plymouth Airport it wouldn't need shuting.

A very good friend of mine and ex patron of the infamous Lyndhurst matchday bar of the 1970s worked at the airport for 20 odd years until recently. He was quite aware of the passenger demographic and the obvious unviable nature of the place. It happens ... services shut in this day and age. If I had a choice between a ward closing at Derriford or subsidising a loss making parrochial airport, guess what I would choose. It's amazing how those that harp on about economic viability suddenly call foul when it affects their own sensibilities.

The 'business' argument is a myth and aimed at getting goverment subsidy for a hopelessly unprofitable private venture. An airport doesn't attract jobs here .. where's the proof it has in the past ? many of us still remember the Delorean fiasco.. with exeter and Newuay round and about, there is no need for a Plymouth airport .. it's just flag waving nonsense for a few suits. Those that have money to invest in anything that would mean big job gains for the city want far more than an airport. If the city wants to make itself a little more attractive, perhaps it should consider silencing the 11.30am nuclear accident siren and cancel the incinerator plans for the city, or just set about getting itself a viable middle class that would make the city rather more palatable than it is in reality.
Industry people with jobs to burn don't want to do business down here ... they want to rest and holiday down here. It's been like that since the tin mines shut and Cornwall was left to sort out the mess they left behind.
just my opinion Frank

I am personally glad that I don't see these frightening metal birds floating around the skies near my hut. Witchcraft.