Anybody in GA who knows some of the above will instantly recognise what I am getting at. The “easy money” has always been an easy temptation to airport managers looking for an easy life.
Sadly the damage is allready done. There are no flying schools based at Southampton any more.
That sounds more like a business opportunity than anything else…
Perhaps we’ll see increased availability of instrument training slots. For example Southampton don’t currently offer those and it might at least give them some income and keep the controllers busy.
There is definitely a shortage of capacity at the moment
It’s funny… I did my JAA IR skills test on a flight to Southampton EGHI in 2012. They had no pricing structure for approaches without landing, so I didn’t get billed. I phoned them up in disbelief and that’s what they told me… I believe that changed later 
EGHI could cater for a lot of GA. They have the parking space. By deliberate choice, they eliminated that business.
Unfortunately for GA there is a need for those commercial flights.
Much of that capacity will be resumed and unless there is a change of policy it’s unlikely to change the outlook for GA.
If there is no commercial uptake there will be another application for housing.
Places where FlyBe operates on the top are already are more GA friendly/cheap than those in the bottom
Maybe FlyBe is also priced out ?
The general rule for european airports is to have 1 million passengers per year. It seems to be the profitability threshold. So all airports try everything they can to reach it
The fact that these airports could be run for much less, doesn’t seem to appear to the people in charge.
It seems to be the same in all matters in Europe, you have to be big to survive in our legal/financial/political environment.
Imagine you are a british airport,
0 you must make money (we all agree)
1 to make money, you must attract customers like airlines and jets
2 to satisfy those, you must have the infrastructure : IAPs, fire service, Jet bowser, hangar, apron space ( the fire service is probably too much and already a big expense )
3 to have IAPs, you must have full ATC paid from your pocket, 7 days a week (again, this requirement )
4 once you have all this, and 20 full time employees, you are desperate to attract jets and airlines. So you will do anything they ask to get them come to your airport. And the small GA coming and going won’t pay near as much as you bills. If you can get from one jet 100 landing fees, and jets don’t like to wait, GA is becoming an inconvenience. Because you just can’t ask them the money that would make them appear on the budget.
If you think in a different environement,
1 set up a box to collect fees in the week, and one person (student job or else) on weekends,
2 invest once in IAP, self serve fuel, runway lighting, and taxiways, to make the field efficient (ie runup pads not to stop jets during your runup)
3 make AFIS and fire available on PPR, so it is the operator’s responsibility to ask for it
4 attract a restaurant and convince the local council to put their business district near the airport, so the noise don’t bother anyone,
Then you have a « lean » aerodrome, friendly and flexible, to tackle any kind of traffic.
I very much doubt that any of those airport will welcome GA if they have not so far. Either they will get schedules again pretty soon or they will go bancrupt and close down and open the next big housing estate which nobody needs.
