I think you've summed it up pretty well there imo. Undoubtedly they face a difficult market with COVID and economic issues, but these apply in many other cases to EDI and other UK airports that seem to do better.
The public ownership of PIK is almost certainly unhelpful, but I think we shouldn't overstate it. Even now at peak summer PIK appears to have only 5-6 deps/day and in winter it can be 1 or 2/day......and these are FR flights that probably pay very little to use the facility, with pax that spend not very much in the terminal. Is that operation really significantly hurting GLA? - and how many airlines other than FR could credibly claim to be considering flying to PIK in order to get a better deal/push down charges at GLA? Surely very few, if any?
Nevertheless, I think GLA is now the only one out of the top 9 or 10 regionals in the UK that doesn't have an FR base and imo it's difficult to see how it can afford for that to be the case.
As an external observer it appeared to me that the airport did better when the previous MD/AGS CEO Amanda McMillan was in post. It seemed they had a more coordinated multi-agency approach to attracting routes and airlines. She departed quite suddenly a few years ago and since then it's been downhill.
Good point about McMillan. I think passenger numbers peaked in 14 or 15 or so, then Provan came in and the rot set in, even before various political and world events occurred.
Ryanair clearly don't value Glasgow/the West. If you combine their GLA/PIK ops its still very small. Ryanair would rather take a stab on routes from EDI to provincial airports in Europe than GLA/PIK to various parts of the Med. O'Leary has publicly slagged the airport, region and the political climate here quite a few times. If PIK shut down tomorrow the based aircraft would not come to GLA IMO. It would be going to EDI or elsewhere.
I don't think wev'e seen the end of the cuts. Icelandair now down to seasonal less than daily. Just about hanging onto the Canadian flights with Westjet following the US carriers and pitching up out east. Although Transat seem very loyal to GLA.