Subsidised air service - I understand it's somewhere between £6-800 per passenger out of Oban !
I was just thinking about how much has been spent on fire cover at Scottish airports over the last 50 years - certainly many hundreds of millions of pounds - perhaps more in today's money !
I have a mental block that a "vehicle" such as a coach, full of fifty people, can run up and down the country/mountain roads of Scotland in all weathers without a fire truck in attendance but a small "vehicle" with 6-10 people can't land at an airport without one. Don't see the ferries or, for that matter, family yachts/boats being followed by lifeboats.
N.b. aircraft certification is based on self evacuation and all going well you will be standing outside for at least 2 minutes when the fire services arrive - unless, of course, as the story goes, at a certain Scottish airport were it will be a wee bit longer because they get their kit on before getting in the fire truck - H&S say it's too dangerous to get dressed in the truck on the way to the accident.
The airport rules, of course, come from the days when aviation was developing and crashes were frequent, the let down aids were primitive, the aircraft design standards were few, petrol was used in big radial engines etc - we didn't have TCAS, GPWS, Synthetic vision, GPS, turbine/jet engines, radar, etc.
The rules are still stuck in the 1930s and we're 80 years down the road but no public servant is going to make what would be considered a career and pension threatening move and remove all these onerous, out of date, requirements.
Be a shame to have all that "safety" in place and still get hit by a meteorite crossing the ramp - should have worn the yellow jacket !!
Just an aside, A320s / B737s etc service airports daily in Australia with not only no RFF but no ATC of any kind - they have done the safety analysis and believe statistically there is no case to answer.