en2r said:
Including parts of Glasgow in Edinburgh's Catchment area??? I don't think Glasgow people would be too impressed with that.
The DfT's Regional Air Services Co-ordination (RASCO) Study in 2002 showed that 2.54m or 50.1% of the Scottish population are within 1-hour access time of EDI by road, and 4.01m or 79.2% are within 2-hours.
I know lots of business people from Glasgow who fly from EDI rather than GLA because EDI has a better choice of scheduled flights and it is easier and quicker to get to than GLA. GLA's problem is that it's the wrong side of a traffic jam for most of the population of Scotland whereas EDI sits between Edinburgh and Glasgow (albeit closer to Edinburgh). The express parcel airlines (TNT, DHL etc) operate most of their Scottish flights from EDI rather than GLA because of EDI's more convenient location.
My suspicion is that BAA does little to encourage international flights from EDI and GLA beacuse they would rather try to route pax via LHR, LGW and STN thereby generating two lots of revenue from each connecting pax rather than just one lot of revenue if the same pax was to fly direct from EDI. I suspect that EDI's international short-haul expansion in recent years has been in spite of BAA rather than because of them and has more to do with the Scottish Parliament encoraging route development.
The availability of international terminal facilities and stands at EDI seems to me to be continuously lagging behind demand and the runway length is too short for MTOW departures of most long-haul types which significantly restricts payload, range and therefore operating economics on long-haul routes.
An independantly owned Edinburgh Airport would, in my opinion, have remedied these deficiencies years ago, but under BAA's virtual monopoly of UK airports there would appear to be no incentive them to do anything other than try to route as many pax as possible via LHR, LGW and STN for as long as they can get away with it. This might be a good thing for BAA but it's not in Scotland's best interests IMHO.