Hi all, S1E, I see your point about Edinburgh now being more of a political centre as well as an economic and tourist one. The same could be said though about Cardiff, and they have lost out massively to Bristol in recent times. The drivers of airport traffic are indeed complex. I agree with SWBKCB that we punch above our weight. Be glad that we have a daily link to Dubai which was unthinkable a few years back, and even that we have (well , until tomorrow morning anyway
) a link to NYC. Obviously we all want to see growth in our local airport but things could be a lot worse. I wasn't joking when I said that we can quite reasonably compare ourselves to MME. I remember, maybe back in the 80s I don't know, the manager of MME on Look North saying that they wanted to overtake NCL as the North East's primary airport. And at the time it really wasn't as ridiculous as it sounds now.