Doncaster Mayor Ros Jones denies claims over reopening date for airport were 'misleading'
The Labour mayor recently lost a non-binding vote of no confidence - which was spearheaded by Reform UK councillors
Last updated 25th Sep 2025
The Mayor of Doncaster has denied misleading local people over Doncaster Sheffield Airport, after it was announced passenger flights are unlikely to return until 2028.
Labour’s Ros Jones, who won her fourth consecutive term as the directly elected mayor of Doncaster in May 2025, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that a pre-election change in messaging was innocent.
Asked why a previous pledge to see “passenger flights in Spring 2026” had been changed to “open airport Spring 2026” ahead of the election, Mayor Jones said: “I think that’d just be down to the amount of words that we’re having to put on literature.”
This is despite the fact the change was noted on Jones’ campaign Facebook posts, where the limit for posts is 63,206 characters.
When notified of this, Mayor Jones said: “As I said, we wanted it open as soon as possible and it came to be August time, summer, when we knew there would be no passenger flights in 2026 when we were doing the assurance work.
“No. I don’t accept it was misleading because at the time it was printed it was correct at that date.”
The mayor insisted the first her team knew for certain that passenger flights would not be next spring was “early August”, but did not directly respond to questions on if there was any indication of the possibility before then.
Jones again mentioned that freight flights will return to DSA in the summer of 2026 and was asked why her timeline continues to differ from that of South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard.
Mayor Coppard has told journalists that he expects passenger flights to return in 2027, ahead of passenger flights in 2028.
Conflictingly, Mayor Jones continues to suggest freight will return next year and passenger flights could be in 2027.
She said: “I think Mayor Coppard is being rather cautious, but I will keep pushing our officers as quickly as possible because these are the jobs and growth that Doncaster, and South Yorkshire, and wider afield, need.
“We can’t agree on when it is going to happen on the basis that I’m being optimistic… Mayor Coppard is being a little bit more careful and, if you listen to what he said, he thinks it will be 2028, but hopefully it will be earlier and I believe, hopefully, it will be earlier.”