What Doncaster Sheffield Airport needs to succeed as a passenger airport - Ismail Mulla
I must concede, I’d never used Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA) when it was operated by Peel Group. Not because it had a bad reputation. On the contrary, it was consistently ranked as the best airport in the UK by the consumer organisation Which? Nor do I have an aversion to South Yorkshire, it’s a lovely part of the region where I completed my training as a journalist.
However, there were a few stumbling blocks. The biggest of which was the lack of destinations that the airport was connected to.
For all the will in the world, and local leaders do deserve credit for getting this far with the reopening, including getting the Government to promise support for the project, DSA cannot fall into the trap of ‘build it and they will come’.
If anything, overtures need to be made to full-service airlines that are capable of flying to major international hubs. There’s something called the hub and spoke model in aviation parlance and DSA needs to become a spoke.
If the airport manages to harpoon a whale like Emirates or Qatar, offering regular flights to the likes of Dubai and Doha, then that will open up a sea of opportunities.
It may seem a long way away with DSA not set to reopen at least until 2028. But whoever ends up running the airport needs to put forward a compelling case for full-service carriers to fly from DSA.
The actual airport site has the ingredients needed for these airlines to operate flights from there.
The other piece of the puzzle is just as important and it was in the headlines last week. That is the importance of transport infrastructure around the airport. There’s little point in reopening the airport when so few people can get to it.
The three South Yorkshire Chambers of Commerce – Doncaster, Sheffield, and Barnsley & Rotherham – issued a united appeal to Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander urging urgent investment in M18 Junction 3, the gateway to the planned reopening of DSA and the Gateway East Investment Zone.
As only business leaders are capable of, they make a compelling economic argument for investment in road improvements.
What would truly be transformational for DSA is a direct rail link to the airport. This isn’t pie in the sky thinking. The pieces of the jigsaw are there. They just need to be put in the right place. For example land has already been safeguarded for a station with the idea being an aspiration dating back to its time under private ownership.
But in order for that to be the case, the Government needs to put its money where its mouth is. The financial burden for unlocking the airport’s potential cannot be left on the shoulders of local leaders.
When I travel abroad, the go-to airport is Manchester. It has the connections and there’s a direct rail link to the airport.
Although the appalling service levels provided by rail companies in recent years have seen me become reliant on fighting through traffic on the M62.
There will be thousands of others in our region who face the same predicament. For the folk in South Yorkshire it is even more difficult to get over the Pennines. Leeds Bradford Airport’s scope is limited by its location.
This is where the argument against reopening DSA on environmental grounds fails. You’re not going to stop people who need to or want to from flying so surely it is better to work with the problem than against it.
All of this points to a golden opportunity for DSA but it needs big picture thinking from Westminster.
Even Reform UK, not exactly known as champions of infrastructure investment, is getting behind DSA, on a local level at least.
Guy Aston, the leader of Reform UK on the City of Doncaster Council, gave his backing to the reopening of DSA, saying that he loves the airport.
In an interview with Save DSA podcast ‘It's Not Terminal’, he said: “Citizens of Doncaster, I want that airport open. I love it. I used it.
“And my wife has said, don't care where we're going, but the first few flights out, we'll be on one.”
Endorsements don’t ring any louder than that. And there was yet more sense from Aston, I never thought agreeing with a Reform councillor would be on the 2025 bingo card.
He said: “If we don't all work together, it's probably not going to open.”
The councillor even talked about pride at standing in queues at airports in other parts of the world and seeing Doncaster on the departure boards. Something that would undoubtedly be a welcome sight again, especially if it is as a spoke to a major hub or two.