I watched the Sturgeon presentation this morning. The £11m loan is the amount for this year only. She couldn't/wouldn't say what it would be next year, but made the point that the business plan depends on what Ryanair decides for their winter 2014-15 timetable and beyond. In other words, they don't know.
£2.4m of this year's money is for renovating the duty-free area and tarting up the terminal so it looks nicer, apparently in the hope/expectation that this will increase pax numbers.
She also wouldn't say when the loans would be repaid other than saying it would take "years" for the airport to return to profitability.
She did make the point that their plans involve pursuing all aspects of the airport's operations - pax, cargo, MRO, FBO, property etc - and that no one of these was seen as more important than the others.
Yes, there is to be a shake-up of the management. There will be two boards - a strategic holding company, with government representation, and an operating company dealing with the day-to-day business of the airport.
There must surely be a big fear that the reason why Infratil never invested is that they couldn't see how they could ever get a return on the investment. It will be interesting to see whether/how having different people making the investment decisions will turn the airport round. Because if it doesn't, we'll have a closed airport and a massive unrecoverable debt to the taxpayer.
NS