In this case renationalisation is the answer. Prestwick Airport was making a profit prior to being owned by Infratil and it can with the right management, make a profit again. To say that renationalisation is never the answer is just wrong. Renationalised East Coast Trains have just made £200 million for the UK Govt. The alternative was that Infratil were going to close the airport which I've no doubt would delight some people.

It's usually not the answer, however a pragmatic person makes case by case judgements and avoids dogma. If PIK closes, Scotland as a country has no airfields anywhere near the size and capability for cargo and military. How much more of Scotland's freight do we want roaded from England?

btw Is Rolls Royce still in business? Why? It was nationalised after going bust due to development issues with the soon to be world class RB211 engine.
I am curious to hear what you mean by "nonsense"? Poaching customers from your competitors is pretty par for the course in the business tbh.

Has any kind of purchase price been announced ? If Infratil sell PIK for a nominal £1 it is an excellent deal for the Govt, while if the price was £1bn it's not such a good deal. Anything in between is a grey area....

I would also like to stress that renationalisation of Prestwick Airport is only temporary, albeit long term. The Deputy First Minister did say that it would be returned to the private sector at some point in the future. The Scottish Government is also going to be seeking a private company to manage the airport on their behalf.
Infratil put a price tag on the airport of somewhere in the region of £11 million, nowhere near £1 billion!

This will be a disaster. Given that market forces will not of themselves generate increased pax traffic at PIK, the Scottish Government will not be able to resist trying to meddle to increase revenue at their state owned airport, either covertly by using tax payer subsidised discounts or overtly by introducing some sort of traffic distribution rules. The only sensible option for PIK is for it to abandon pax flight and thus lose all the associated costs i.e. close the pax terminal completely and concentrate on being an mx base and maybe freight etc.

James, I'm theoretically open to being persuaded that perhaps this is a good move, but I think you need to find some better arguments. So what if the airport was profitable some years ago? Blackberry and Nokia were profitable some years ago. Air France was profitable some years ago. Times change. Past performance is no guide to future results.

What can a new owner (and moreover one subject to EU State Aid Guidelines) do which the existing owners can't, and which isn't just playing a zero-sum game with traffic at GLA? (Genuine question.)

As Prestwick is on the west coast, it provides an airfield that the military of many nations can use and as I have done, been through there on fixed wing aero-medical flights.

The Traffic Distribution Rules were declared illegal in 1989 at The Court of Session, I don't imagine the SNP would see any upside in tinkering. It's way too politically sensitive in Glasgow and Edinburgh. You make a good point about passenger traffic. For me, the key is getting some up front development money to put passenger traffic at a cost base where it's profitable or revenue neutral to keep working with Ryanair Remember they pay parking fees over the winter for a fair whack of their fleet and have four bays of hangar space on Apron H. However they're currently using a terminal built in the 1960s and designed around long haul traffic, something less maintenance intensive and more basic may be needed.

Knock the old cargo sheds down and put up a basic tin shed passenger terminal with access to the railway and remove the current building before it finally blows away in a winter gale.

The previous owners allowed costs to spiral, using the previous model of having retail and core services in house and tightly controlled is not beyond the wit of man to achieve.

First piece of news following yesterday
 

BBC News - Aircraft scrapping firm starts up in Prestwick

As ever BBC not quite up to date - doesn't DTV now have a scrapping operation?

Yes - Sycamore aviation is at DTVA. Also similar operations at St Athan and Bruntingthorpe.

Let's assume the soon to be created Scottish Defence Force will be based at PIK, at least the air force part..

So there will be RSAF Lossiemouth *and* RSAF Prestwick then ?

No different from RAF Brize Norton and the numerous other RAF airfields dotted around south of the border :hmm:

According to the BBC, Infratil may give PIK away, full story here:

BBC News - Glasgow Prestwick Airport 'may be given away for nothing'

On a side note, where does this leave Manston?

Don't worry - it's still there, tucked away safely in the south-east corner of the island. :E

You can always rely on the PPrune comedians...

I think I would be safe to say that the Scottish Government has no interest in Manston, that would make it very vulnerable. But back to Prestwick, its difficult to see where the growth will come from on the passenger side. But with all the things going on around other areas of the airfield, I think there is grounds for cautious optimism.

The rent on the polar hangar must be worth 250grand a year?

I would say Manston is very vulnerable - if you have studied the accounts (sorry boring I know) but a majority of losses have been incurred at Manston, whereas the majority of spending has also been done there..

PIK
 

At the very least I hope they rename it and get rid of those stupid cartoons adorning the terminal.
And perhaps some management that are willing to put themselves out and try to attract new business and to look after what little they have at the moment.:rolleyes:

Robert Burns International Airport, Does it Make The Airport More appealing, Suppose anything is better than Pure dead Brilliant !