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Transport (North-West)

I agree absolutely with the Minister that we cannot chain airlines to Manchester and say that they have to fly from there. However, we need to look at the reasons, commercial and otherwise, why they have decided to reduce the routes. Clearly, the recession is going to be part of that. However, it may be because of other reasons, such as landing costs, including the differential costs between one airport and another, or because having a base in a regional airport is very expensive for airlines to maintain some of their aircraft. Whatever the reasons, if we can have a look at them, so that we can perhaps make a difference by encouraging airlines to change their decisions and increase their capacity at regional airports, that would be good. We cannot keep pressing everything into Heathrow and Gatwick, which are already operating at congestion levels. It is quite unpleasant to travel through some of these major airports at the moment.