Beauvais may have been dropped by Ryanair and Faro suspended but there is a considerable increase in Dublin for the winter from 9 weekly last year to 16 this year with a double daily and additional third flight on Fridays and Sundays.

Faro dropped due to dispute with Portuguese.
Rumour in airport doing the rounds is that Stansted flights may be returning.

We`ll wait and see!

If this is the case, what is happening to the Faro FR base ?

I believe it`s the usual Ryanair way of bargaining - drop a few routes and if Faro doesn`t play ball they`ll drop a few more until they do.
Prestwick suffers at the expense of Ryanairs greed!!

FR are a business (and a successful one at that) and not a charity.

Could be possible now they can lower the fares due to the Stansted deal with MAG, but there's still the problem of APD and high taxes which was the main reason for closing the route. Might they not make better profit flying from Stansted to new destinations or increasing the frequency on other existing routes rather than reinstating Prestwick? Would be great news if it happened!!

Re-instating the PIK-STN would offer Scots the chance to use Ryanair flights out of Stansted to destinations not available fro PIK/EDI, plus offer business connections between Scotland /London, something that worked for years.
I just don`t accept this APD excuse, the customer pays this NOT Ryanair. If people can`t fly to London with Ryanair they will fly with someone else and still pay APD, so Ryanair`s excuse is utter b***ocks

The route would also negate Ryanair having to ship equipment and supplies to it`s 2 PIK hangers by road.

If I may disagree, Ryanair did rather better on PIK-STN/DUB when they were competitive on frequency. The coming of the one size fits all B737-8AS meant the DUB schedule went from 2-3 daily regular as clockwork to 1-2 times daily at guess the schedule. STN went the same way as there were 45% more seats per aircraft to fill against BA and EZY using A319s. Seems there's change afoot at Ryanair! It's an achievement Aer Lingus are winning on frequency in this market flying turboprops on GLA-DUB. FR could and should have buried them years ago.

And it looks like SOE that FR are looking to get back some of their market share by upping the DUB frequency once again. The double daily PIK - DUB was useful for me business wise but i have since had to use EIR from GLA because of the reductions in frequency from PIK. The new FR schedule is good news for me with better fares and much better aircraft! The EIR ATRs are getting a bit tatty.

EIr ATRs are all currently being replaced with brand new models. EIr is working not only on frequency but on the increasing connection opportunities on competitive EI mainline longhaul
I can't see a sudden resurgance to the "good old days" of flood the market high frequency super short haul from FR particularly at PIK.
I suspect this is just a FR temporary reshuffle.

Indeed but the cost of people using an ATR to do business over a B737 is an order of magnitude. EI point to point in this market is pricey, the ideal FR which worked very well was morning noon and evening daily at the same time on the right sized aircraft. Quite why FR didn't take B737-700s as well was a shame, however they're not a sophisticated organisation behind the scenes alas. The much larger series 800 has proved too big for a lot of routes that worked remarkably well on the 200, and for more than a few bases.

Only 1-2 waves of GLA-DUB are any use for connecting, the rest needs p2p, a market FR allowed EI back into.

Anyone know if the airport has been sold yet?

Announcement later today

Scottish government have bought it. Formal announcement at 1430 by deputy first minister.:D

Sounds good news?

So what does the Govt plan to do with Prestwick once it formally takes ownership ? Are management at Glasgow airport going to object and throw some lawyers at this ?

A deal with Ryanair for significant route expansion from summer 2014 coming up I would suggest. Maybe some investment in cargo operations as well. Prestwick Airport saved by the Scottish Government ahead of an independence vote in 11 months time...

...more money down the plug hole. If FR wanted to expand they could have done it by now. Major serious airlines won't touch it with a barge pole.