I think that's about half way right, PIK is actually pretty handy if you're going to GLA, so nowadays I don't think remoteness is the main issue. PIK rode a loco bubble back in the day but what Stagecoach and Infratil did was get big ideas based on the bubble and allowed their cost base to rise. The figures in the strategic transport review submitted by the then owners back in the early 2000s are particularly optimistic....
Gloebspan tried and moved out, BMI baby did the same, Wizz Air have also come to the same conclusion and moved to GLA.
The elephant in the room is "What is PIK actually for?"
Now I can agree with the cargo, training and maintenance but to have the taxpayer bailing out a business predicated on making a return off Ryanair, *after* the said airline removed most of their inbound rourtes to EDI, is skewing the market and undermining a commercial competitor at GLA. The legality of this must be questionable, in the same way it has been questioned all across Europe. One of the airports PIK was connected to in the bubble years is closing btw, anyone remember Lubeck (Hamburg)?
Investing in the current terminal is throwing good money after bad because it's not remotely fit for the purpose for which it is being used and is a huge cost to the business. However the business case for knocking it down and rebuilding on a much smaller scale just has no return on that investment, so the result is a typical high cost fudge until the election...
There is barely a commercial requirement for two airports in the central belt and certainly not three. A properly central airport with rail links going East, West and North would be more Dublin sized in terms of traffic as opposed to the continual local East Coast / West Coast stramash that has given us an EDI performing well beyond a role for which it was never designed and a GLA that can actually sit almost empty outwith peak hours in the summer. I counted a single Loganair SF340 on the apron one day in July last summer, something I would never have imagined growing up with SD360s and 748s in and out all the time.
The traffic patterns have changed massively, it's just the infrastructure is not up to the mark.
Recent planning calamities suggest the talent pool is as thin as puddle of gnat's p*** as ever :
Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh Trams
Glasgow Rail Link
Last edited by Skipness One Echo; 23rd Jun 2014 at 11:19.