I need to spend most of this week in London, but have tickets to see James’ first “official” gig since they got back together. There is a rather large problem though – the gig is on Wednesday evening…in Carlisle! 
I often harp on about the train being the best way to hop around the UK, but when time is of the essence, you can’t beat flying. As it happens, I need to be in London until about 3pm on Wednesday, and then back again for Thursday lunchtime. I could do this by train, but it would be expensive (over £100) at such short notice and involve spending almost ten hours on the rails.
An early evening flight to Carlisle, together with a morning return the next day, would be ideal. Of course, flight routes need a decent number of travellers to be commercially viable, and my desire to pop in and out of London to see a band play in Cumbria is not exactly representative of demand for this journey.
Carlisle does have an operational airport, and passenger services have been mooted, but the catchment area around the city would only support very limited flights. There could perhaps be enough demand from people in the southeast who want to take a break in the Lake District, but any airline attempting to offer such flights would struggle to get slots at most London airports. Only City would offer a big enough time advantage over rail. Considering that Eastern Airways were not able to make Newcastle to London City flights work, I wouldn’t really hold out much higher hopes for Carlisle.
If anyone does have a go at operating flights from Carlisle, I wouldn’t be surprised to see routes to Dublin or Belfast being much easier to sustain than flights to London. For now, following last year’s change of hands, the airport seems to be pinning its hopes more on freight operations than passenger services, but as we have seen time and time again, the aviation market is very fickle, and who knows what might be in store for currently unused regional airports like Carlisle.
In the meantime, I think I’ll give the concert a miss – it will simply cost too much and take up too much time travelling. Carlisle might be James’ “first” concert, but their Manchester homecoming show is always going to eclipse all others.