Take-off or bail out? The airport even Ryanair thinks is a tough sell

From afar Doncaster Sheffield Airport appears clear for take-off.

The grass verges are well trimmed, the modern, glass-fronted terminal glimmers in the muted winter sun.

But there are no holidaymakers, no families jetting off for a week in the sun, no rattle of suitcase wheels and no roar of jet engines.

Opened in April 2005, the airport once served a host of destinations, including Berlin, Dubrovnik, Paris, Alicante and Mallorca.

Come November 2022 all flights were grounded when owners Peel Group said it was no longer financially viable and mothballed the site.

Today, the 800-acre site, a former RAF base, lies empty except for a small maintenance crew and security presence.

Since closing, City of Doncaster Council and the South Yorkshire Mayor have worked to reopen the airport and, earlier this week, their efforts were given the backing of Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Speaking on Wednesday, Reeves said she would support the work to "recreate South Yorkshire Airport City as a thriving regional airport".

But as the site taxis towards a potential spring 2026 reopening, opinion is divided on whether it has the wings to fly.

For Mayor of Doncaster Ros Jones, it's exactly what the north of England needs.

Speaking in December, when a private twin-engine plane became the first aircraft to land on the runway in more than two years, Jones said: "I believe that we can go from strength to strength.

"Medium to long term, I think it will be the economic stimulus that the whole of the north needs as well as South Yorkshire and Doncaster."

The council, which says it has an international operator waiting in the wings, believes the net economic benefit could be up to £1.5bn within the first three decades of operating.

But despite the positive noises, it was announced last month that more than £100m of public money would be needed to reopen Doncaster Sheffield Airport after the local authority failed to secure the necessary private funding.

One issue facing Doncaster Sheffield Airport is its proximity to other airports.

Within a 70-mile (110km) radius passengers can already choose from four other sites, Manchester, Leeds Bradford, East Midlands and Humberside.

Up the M1 in Leeds, Vincent Hodder, chief executive at Leeds Bradford Airport, is unequivocal in his assessment.

"I'm predicting that DSA will fail," he told the BBC.

"I can't foresee a scenario where DSA is able to generate sufficient passenger numbers to enable it to actually be self-sustaining."

He claimed "a lot of airlines were paid to operate out of [DSA]" under the previous ownership, adding: "Their losses were underwritten, so the taxpayer ends up funding both the cost of the operation as well as the losses incurred by the airline."

One thing any airport needs is flights and Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary also remains unconvinced.

"Doncaster is a hard sell," he said during a press conference this week.

"We used to fly to Doncaster, but there isn't much of a traffic base there."

He said DSA was not part of his company's growth plans.

"It's close to Leeds Bradford and Leeds has grown rapidly with us and Jet2 in the last five or six years.

"I think it's a very tough sell in the shadow of Leeds Bradford."

Despite the concerns of some, local businesses are "almost unanimous" in their support for the reopening, according to the chief executive of Doncaster Chamber of Commerce, Dan Fell.

"The stats show that for every one million passengers airports create about 1,500 jobs," he said.

"It's a significant amount of employment and they tend to be more highly skilled jobs."

Mr Fell, whose organisation supports about 2,000 businesses in Doncaster every year, says airports also "tend to work as quite a magnet for inward investment".

"Airports do tend to be quite high on the list of things people are looking for when making their decisions about where in the UK they move to.

"Sheffield is one of the only core cities in the UK that hasn't got an airport within an hour's reach."

As well as outbound flights, airports can also help boost local tourism, Mr Fell added.

According to Doncaster Council, the airport could be profitable within five years of reopening and bring almost 5,000 direct jobs as well as creating up to 11,500 jobs in the wider economy.

While the airport's predicted benefit to business and the region's economy would be a welcome boost, environmental campaigners have raised concerns about the reopening.

Christine Gilligan Kubo, Green Party councillor for Hillsborough on Sheffield City Council, said airport expansion "cannot be part of any serious plans to address climate change".

"Reopening DSA with all its additional flights will only make achieving our carbon targets more difficult," she said.

Doncaster Central MP Sally Jameson said opening the airport would be "good for climate change" as it would prioritise "sustainable aviation".

"Not only is it good for climate change but its also feeding into the jobs and industry of the future which post-industrial areas like Doncaster and South Yorkshire absolutely should have a hand in."

However, Richard Sulley, senior research fellow at the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, said the technologies for this do not yet exist, "so there will be a period where aviation fuel is being burned".

Those aiming to reopen DSA have pointed to another airport once owned by Peel - the then Durham Tees Valley Airport.

Renamed Teesside International it was bought by the Tees Valley Combined Authority in 2019 and passsenger numbers and turnover have grown.

However, its accounts show it made a pre-tax loss of £6.63m in 2024, which is worse than its £4.46m deficit in 2023 and the £5.73m it lost in 2019.

It was a chilly November night when the final flight landed in Doncaster in November 2022.

Passengers on the TUI flight from Hurghada in Egypt told the BBC it was a "crying shame" the airport was closing.

By that time TUI was the only firm operating flights from DSA and the airport's pre-pandemic passenger numbers were just under one and a half million in 2019.

In contrast Leeds Bradford saw just under four million passengers and Liverpool saw five million in that same year.

Now, with Ros Jones promising flights in a little over 12 months can the site controversially once known as Robin Hood Airport hit the target or will it miss the mark?

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