Originally Posted by
LOGICAL
The Orlando flights will end up returning to GLA at some point. The population of Greater Glasgow is almost twice that of EDI. Virgin made a mistake moving albeit apparently at the instruction of Delta. The BA flight to LGW is nicknamed the Disney express for a reason.
The part I've emboldened is undeniable true, but the issue is more how accessible each airport is to the population it serves rather than simply the size of that population. Take as an example a journey from the A726 at junction 7 of the M8 as a reasonable proxy for the Coatbridge / Airdrie / Bellshill part of the Greater Glasgow conurbation. Google Maps shows a car journey time of 30-50 minutes to arrive at EDI for 0900 (
source) and 28-50 minutes to arrive at GLA for the same time (
source). So having a larger population isn't necessarily of benefit to GLA if a fair chunk of that population would find it just as quick to drive to EDI as to GLA. (I appreciate travel times vary by time of day and there'll no doubt be times when my example journey would be quicker to GLA than to EDI).
Furthermore, there is a general trend of the population of central Scotland moving eastwards. The population projections to 2043 (
source) shown below show that population of the local authorities in the eastern part of central Scotland is generally projected to increase at a faster rate than those to the west (some of which are predicted to decrease in population). (I appreciate that there's some - e.g. East Renfrewshire - that buck that general trend.)
Looking at that graph, would you rather be running an airport on the western side of Edinburgh or one on the western side of Glasgow?
Anyway, to answer QEC's question, the wisdom of the forum seems to be that a) US pre-clearance at EDI won't happen and b) if it did it would be of little benefit. Time, as ever, will tell.