I think the article should have been renamed "Edinburgh Aiport more popular than Glasgow International Airport", as the combined "Glasgow" Airports -GLA/PIK total would appear to trounce Edinburgh. Makes very interesting reading. Looking at the rise in EDI figures appears to be clearly associated with the enlarging Ryanair base.
No longer true. The combined annual figure for GLA/PIK is less than 50k ahead of EDI as at Nov 09 (figures from CAA). At current rates EDI may even be ahead when the Dec 09 traffic figures are published tomorrow and certainly by the end of this month.
Looking at the last ten years the gap has closed steadily and, using trends from before the arrival of Ryanair, EDI would have moved ahead about 2014. All Ryanair has done is speeded up the process.
Glasgow airport has performed poorly over the past few years especially against its peers. For the top 10 UK airports it has the largest percentage decrease in passengers over the past 12 months.
I would not like to be part of the management team at Glasgow and, personally, I don't think new ownership will change the fortunes dramatically. People talk about a new owner attracting Ryanair from PIK, but the fees received from FR (and we know they would have to be less than offered at EDI as this is already on the table) may not sit comfortably with gaining a commercial return against the purchase price of the airport. You can buy market share but the issue comes when you then want to make a reasonable commercial retun on the investment. And we all know what happens when you ask Ryanair for more money.
Difficult times ahead for GLA I'm afraid.
Ex