Hi Mark
I don't think that Thomson wanted to drop the Coventry route, there's been some good flights/holidays at the right price going from there and of course when there are problems at Doncaster Airport, (where Thomson are running the show) Coventry was a good "get out of jail" card for them because the landing fees at Doncaster are crippling anyone who wants to go in there.
When I search for a holiday the Thomson search facility sometimes throws Coventry up, as well as Doncaster, and the difference in holidays between the two airports is quite a substantial amount.
I think Coventry has been the victim of not having the investment and the planning permission to bring the facilities into the 21st century.
I don't know a lot about the situation, but it appears (I think) that Warwickshire council have their fingers in the pie of nearby Birmingham Airport and there's a conflict of interests.
I think when the planning permission was refused in the high court last week, Thomson saw that the future was none existent for Coventry with no planning permission and no investment being put into the place, and boy did that place need some serious money spending on it

...so they got out....I don't think it had anything to do with the cost of fuel as has been reported by the BBC, infact I'm getting bl**dy sick and tired of Airlines blaming everything on the price of a barrel of oil, which has fallen back to $68 a barrel, and Thomson have an hedging policy anyway....so will they be buying aviation fuel while its at it lowest sine 2007 and still passing the high prices off, on this.?
I also read somewhere that there was a Government white paper that was putting forward the plans to build a massive airport on the scale of Heathrow in the countryside near Rugby...and then both Birmingham and Coventry would close.
This was because Birmingham Airport is reaching its capacity, however a couple of villages would have to go and investment in the surrounding roads made, obviously there is/was a lot of objections by the people who live in these villages and the environmentalists.
One good argument for Coventry was that given the right amount of investment, Coventry could take the "over-spill" and relieve the pressure on Birmingham International Airport.
I feel sorry for anyone who is booked from there and anybody who likes the convenience of the airport, but I'm not going to deny that IMO it's a poo hole and my opinion is not clouded by the fact I was bussed down there by Thomson from Doncaster and suffered a 9 hour delay.
I have several small airports near me, Leeds/Bradford,Humberside and Doncaster Airport, the latter two are literally stuck in a field, but Doncaster was purpose built because it already had one of the longest runways in situ from the RAF days of Finningley, so, forgetting Doncaster because it's only 3 years old.
Humberside airport is a palace compared to the facilities at Coventry.
There's small and modern and then there's small and antiquated, Coventry is just a tacky snack bar in a oversize garden shed and then you come outside to cross over the path and enter an oversized portacabin with rows of basic plastic chairs and another corner shop counter flogging drinks at rip-off prices.
And do you know what struck me the most about this place.? It was the fact that it wasn't even clean and with the air tainted with human body odour and food in the giant portacabin......it made me feel like puking before I even stepped on a plane.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwickshire/7673791.stm
Sanji
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Edited by
Sanji
2008-10-16 19:59:24