I HAVE a bit of a soft spot for Bournemouth Airport.

This is in large part due to my childhood.

My old man (God rest his soul) was an air traffic controller for many years, first at Heathrow Airport and then at nearby West Drayton, at that time the UK’s main ATC facility before the opening of Swanwick in Hampshire.

In the mid seventies, he took charge of a special unit at Hurn run by the Civil Aviation Authority and charged with evaluating new systems and technology.

The building itself is still there, on the left as you drive into the airport. By this September, it may or may not be the new home of Bournemouth’s only free school.

So, as my dad worked at the airport, I used to hang around there, having already developed a fascination for all things aviation-related from spending time in the control tower at Heathrow and living virtually by the side of one of the two runways.

Hurn in those days wasn’t much of an airport. Then it was in the public sector owned by Dorset County Council and Bournemouth Borough Council with councillors who had no idea what to do with it.

A few of them ‘played’ at airports without having much of a clue about what they were doing.

The respected Flight International magazine disparagingly called it “a collection of sheds.”

And the biggest excitement most days was the arrival of the Dan Air service from Jersey.

The airport was for a long time single handedly kept afloat by travel entrepreneur, Peter Bath, with his Palmair tour operation.

Today things are a bit different.

Bournemouth is privately (by the Manchester Airports Group) rather than publicly owned and rather than having a shed as a departure terminal, it has some of the best facilities of any regional airport in the UK.

There’s one striking similarity though.

There are still not enough flights.

Aviation is notoriously susceptible to the whim of the marketplace, global events and the capriciousness of carriers.

So, after spending £50m on a new terminal, arrivals hall and aprons, the airport was hit, like the whole sector, after the financial crash.

It took years to recover from that particular body blow. Some would argue there has not been a full recovery.

More recently Bournemouth has suffered the double whammy of the Royal Mail withdrawing its lucrative contract and Flybe heading for the departure gate after just one season - a decision that genuinely seemed to take airport executives by surprise.

They thought Flybe might, forgive the pun, be in for the long haul.

They were not the only ones. Flybe bosses certainly gave us that impression when we interviewed them at their Exeter base last January.

So all this should put the £3 drop off charge into some kind of perspective.

Yes it has made a lot of people cross. Quite how many of them would prefer to trek across or around the M25 to catch a flight rather than pay the fee is an interesting question.

And no, you aren’t charged to drop at Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester, but these airports make plenty of money. And if you want some perspective, then the charge is about the same as a fairly poor cup of coffee onboard your flight to Pisa or Malaga.

No I don’t think the drop-off charge was a great PR move in the first place. It has dogged the airport for five years.

But yes, I do support regional airports in general and Bournemouth Airport in particular, as an important part of the regional economy. Any business exists to make money. If the numbers don’t add up, they don’t add up.

If someone in Manchester decides to switch off the lights in departures, we will have a bit more to complain about than a £3 drop off charge...