We need to get comfortable with Doncaster Sheffield Airport being a long-term project, says Oliver Coppard

Mayor Coppard sat down with the Local Democracy Reporting Service for an interview to answer questions about the airport reopening and his looming decision on whether to approve crucial funding for the project.

In the interview, the LDRS floated the hypothetical scenario of, should the funding be approved and the reopening does happen – at what point do they “pull the plug” on the airport if it is not successful.

Coppard said: “It’s a fair question. We are in this for the long-term, if we take that decision and I think we’ve all got to be comfortable with that.

“There will be, in that process, periods where we’re investing significant amounts of money and we’re still working towards a profitable airport that is paying back into the communities of South Yorkshire.

“That’s not to say though, that there aren’t steps on that journey that are really positive for the whole of South Yorkshire, regardless of when the airport itself is making money.”

He said airport staff would be spending their salaries in local communities, boosting their economies.

Businesses coming into the airport site for manufacturing and sustainable aviation would pay business rates which would be retained in the economies of South Yorkshire.

The mayor continued: “It might not mean we have a profitable airport in that sense, but without the airport those things wouldn’t be possible.

“There’s all sorts of ways of looking at that and that’s why I’m keen to look at this in a more holistic way in the round, because it’s the airport that acts as a catalyst – acts as an anchor – and there’s all sorts of things that go on around that.”

Whilst the mayor did not give specifics on when the cut-off point for the airport would be, should it not perform as hoped, he did state that things would be different to support its success.

“I think the model that was first used to run the airport wasn’t effective at making the airport profitable,” he said, “That’s not to criticise the owners, we’re past that point, I want to build a positive relationship with Peel… they are the land-owners.

“We’re also the public sector, not the private sector, so the idea that this is all just about profit isn’t the same and the idea that you’ve got to do that in a short-term way is not the same.

“We’ve got to take a long-term view about what it contributes to the whole economy of South Yorkshire. If we’re trying to build a sustainable aviation hub then it’s got to have an airport at the heart of it.

“We have to take a more holistic view and a longer-term view, so this isn’t all about the profit and loss account in the first three years in the way it needs to be sometimes for a private sector model.

“We operate in a different space, we’re the public sector, not the private sector. We do things differently. We have a different metric of success.”

The Local Democracy Reporting Service previously reported that the decision on whether to approve millions of pounds of gainshare funding for Doncaster Sheffield Airport was set for September 9, 2025.