Letter in Today's The Herald

[Bearsden]

TBH by saying that you worry about WestJet and Emirates it sounds like you are implying there’s no market worth serving for the airlines from GLA.

Trouble is when airlines look to consolidate flights from 2 nearby airports into just one, the airport commanding the highest demand from the travelling public will always win.

Edinburgh has created that demand over the last 10 years since GIP acquired the airport and Gordon Dewar became CEO by 'doing the deals' as well as creating the infrastructure and connectivity (I'm just about to head into Buchanan Street to collect my wife & daughter from the CitylinkAIR!)

I've always said that Central Scotland and indeed both north and south of it is only one market for direct long-haul travel (< 50 miles between GLA & EDI isn't going to make a difference to an airline especially if that is the way it is sold to the airline by the airport 'Where Scotland Meets The World' v 'Proud To Serve Scotland') . . . I thought I saw a different marketing line from GLA recently (other than Let's Fly) but can't find it

Then it is down to the 'bean counters' . . . I don't suspect they will build in much difference in originating yield into the £ calculations for long-haul (unless they perceive a distinct east/west leakage to say Manchester or Newcastle or more/less use of airline alliance hubs, but the latter could be significant for the inbound market) then it is down to airport charges and other base costs (including overnight accommodation, transportation, standby crews if operating multiple daily flights etc) and terms & conditions, duration of the deal etc

[Clive]

TBH by saying that you worry about WestJet and Emirates it sounds like you are implying there’s no market worth serving for the airlines from GLA.

Trouble is when airlines look to consolidate flights from 2 nearby airports into just one, the airport commanding the highest demand from the travelling public will always win.

Edinburgh has created that demand over the last 10 years since GIP acquired the airport and Gordon Dewar became CEO by 'doing the deals' as well as creating the infrastructure and connectivity (I'm just about to head into Buchanan Street to collect my wife & daughter from the CitylinkAIR!)

I've always said that Central Scotland and indeed both north and south of it is only one market for direct long-haul travel (< 50 miles between GLA & EDI isn't going to make a difference to an airline especially if that is the way it is sold to the airline by the airport 'Where Scotland Meets The World' v 'Proud To Serve Scotland') . . . I thought I saw a different marketing line from GLA recently (other than Let's Fly) but can't find it

Then it is down to the 'bean counters' . . . I don't suspect they will build in much difference in originating yield into the £ calculations for long-haul (unless they perceive a distinct east/west leakage to say Manchester or Newcastle or more/less use of airline alliance hubs, but the latter could be significant for the inbound market) then it is down to airport charges and other base costs (including overnight accommodation, transportation, standby crews if operating multiple daily flights etc) and terms & conditions, duration of the deal etc

And GLA doesn’t even have a bus to Edinburgh, one of Europe’s tourism hotspots. The world’s airlines won’t like that when it comes to trying to find a USP for using GLA over EDI for serving the Scottish inbound or outbound markets. Been saying it for years. It’s crazy mental schoolboy stuff.

[egpffqtv]

What’s the likelihood of anyone at GLA/AGS reading these letters?

In my opinion this all needs highlighted to their press/media team - probably via Twitter.

The only hope GLA has is if it is sold off. I’m not even convinced AGS sacking the current management team and bringing in a new one would make one iota of difference.

They’re an absolute disgrace.

[Allen McL]

Let's say GLA or indeed AGS goes up for sale tomorrow. Who is most likely to purchase ?

[atuk]

Glasgow’s problems go back to Open Skies.

At that time they had AA, UA, BA, AC and NW. They should have built a flight connection to capture domestic flights from LBA, EMA,SOU, BRS and BFS offering seamless transfer to transatlantic from domestic flights and vice versa. That way we would have added additional traffic to supplement that originating within central Scotland.

Nowadays it’s all about alliance networks : Star, Oneworld and Skyteam. Edinburgh has ensured they have critical mass where Glasgow has not.

[atuk]

Also another factor overlooked is that EDI has become NCL’s second airport. A less than two hour train journey, around two hours by car and a catchment area which includes The Scottish Borders, Northumberland and the southern reaches of East Lothian.

[hads]

Good to see the level of knowledge on here.
I would only hope that PIK gets bulldozed.
Two things would happen from that.
1. Ryanair would have to make a decison for or against putting metal at Glasgow.
2. I doubt they would, so, instantly , there are 500,000 punters up for grabs. Thats got to be of interest to someone.

[Iain]

I don't get the print edition of The herald so maybe I've missed it, but as far as I can see there has been no response from GLA to the letters that were published last week.

An organisation like AGS should have a PR/media team who are monitoring the press for any mention of their airport. As such these letters should have been flagged to the management team and Johnston or provan should have written a response letter to the herald ASAP.

If we don't see something in the next few days then that's just more evidence that the management are completely at sea and have taken their eyes off the ball - and that individual departments like PR/media are not operating properly.

And GLA doesn’t even have a bus to Edinburgh, one of Europe’s tourism hotspots. The world’s airlines won’t like that when it comes to trying to find a USP for using GLA over EDI for serving the Scottish inbound or outbound markets. Been saying it for years. It’s crazy mental schoolboy stuff.

Absolutely, to me it's just absolutely inexplicable! How any business can tolerate something like that that blatantly targets the absolute centre of their catchment area and sucks their business and market share dry - and do nothing to try to counter it- is absolutely beyond me.

To draw a parallel - if Tesco started a bus to their store from the car park of the local Asda, would the management team at Asda just sit back, ignore it, do nothing for over a decade and let it suck more and more customers out of their store? Of course not - they'd immediately put on a competing bus to their store from Tesco's car park and offer lots of ASDA discount vouchers to passengers who used it for good measure!

I think I read somewhere that the Queen Street to Edinburgh train services are going down to half hourly for much of the day, so any argument about people travelling by train between Edinburgh and GLA is well and truly sunk!

Not only that but we have the Buchanan Street to EDI bus operating through the night whereas the last airport bus from GLA to the city centre is at 11pm. Ubelievably embarrassing stuff!

Iirc I think I remember you hinting two or three years ago before covid that maybe something was in the offing regarding a bus, but obviously it's never come to fruition. I don't know if you can tell us what you'd heard at the time?

[Clive]

I don't get the print edition of The herald so maybe I've missed it, but as far as I can see there has been no response from GLA to the letters that were published last week.

An organisation like AGS should have a PR/media team who are monitoring the press for any mention of their airport. As such these letters should have been flagged to the management team and Johnston or provan should have written a response letter to the herald ASAP.

If we don't see something in the next few days then that's just more evidence that the management are completely at sea and have taken their eyes off the ball - and that individual departments like PR/media are not operating properly.

And GLA doesn’t even have a bus to Edinburgh, one of Europe’s tourism hotspots. The world’s airlines won’t like that when it comes to trying to find a USP for using GLA over EDI for serving the Scottish inbound or outbound markets. Been saying it for years. It’s crazy mental schoolboy stuff.

Absolutely, to me it's just absolutely inexplicable! How any business can tolerate something like that that blatantly targets the absolute centre of their catchment area and sucks their business and market share dry - and do nothing to try to counter it- is absolutely beyond me.

To draw a parallel - if Tesco started a bus to their store from the car park of the local Asda, would the management team at Asda just sit back, ignore it, do nothing for over a decade and let it suck more and more customers out of their store? Of course not - they'd immediately put on a competing bus to their store from Tesco's car park and offer lots of ASDA discount vouchers to passengers who used it for good measure!

I think I read somewhere that the Queen Street to Edinburgh train services are going down to half hourly for much of the day, so any argument about people travelling by train between Edinburgh and GLA is well and truly sunk!

Not only that but we have the Buchanan Street to EDI bus operating through the night whereas the last airport bus from GLA to the city centre is at 11pm. Ubelievably embarrassing stuff!

Iirc I think I remember you hinting two or three years ago before covid that maybe something was in the offing regarding a bus, but obviously it's never come to fruition. I don't know if you can tell us what you'd heard at the time?

I used to pester them about it. IIRC the last time they hinted that they were working on it. I think there may be some conflict because the GLA forecourt -Glasgow City Centre bus service is specially licensed and protected. The contract won’t allow for a directly competing service and obviously an Edinburgh service would have to drop pax in Glasgow to make it viable. So maybe that’s the problem.

I suggested the new GLA-Glasgow-Edinburgh-Glasgow-GLA service could use a new bus stop on the other side of the car park by the HIE to get round that.

I’d also suggest they could do a deal with EDI and the bus operator to extend the EDI-Glasgow service to GLA in a joint airport connectivity venture so it would route Edinburgh-EDI-Glasgow-GLA-Glasgow-EDI-Edinburgh like they have inter-airport services in London but things have moved on so far since then that it’s hard to see any incentive for EDI to share costs by entering into that.

[Iain]

I used to pester them about it. IIRC the last time they hinted that they were working on it. I think there may be some conflict because the GLA forecourt -Glasgow City Centre bus service is specially licensed and protected. The contract won’t allow for a directly competing service and obviously an Edinburgh service would have to drop pax in Glasgow to make it viable. So maybe that’s the problem.

Tbh I'm not so sure it does need to call at the city centre. EDI has 2 buses an hour to Glasgow only, so even if we say the potential traffic the other way is half that I think you could still have 1 bus/hr from GLA direct to EDI.

Additionally, the current Glasgow-Edinburgh bus is timetabled at 1h21, so once you add in the journey time from the airport to the city centre and in and out of the bus station you're probably looking at 1h45 GLA to Edinburgh which probably isn't very attractive. If you go direct it might save 10 minutes or so.

I've mentioned it before, but I think a possible routing could be Greenock-Ocean Terminal (in summer)-GLA-Edinburgh avoiding the city centre.

- it would give a direct bus from Greenock to GLA
- it would provide a direct link from Greenock to Edinburgh (which iirc used to run in the late 90s when I lived in Edinburgh)
- it would connect the cruise terminal to GLA and to Edinburgh - personally I'd rather cruise visitors went Glasgow (and many do), but if you go on cruise/travel forums a very common question is how to get from the cruise ship dock in Greenock to Edinburgh for a day visit.
- Because of the above you may be able to attract funding from Inverclyde council and Peel Ports, and more generally if 3 organisations are in on it then it'll be easier to persuade a bus company to operate it.

Even if the existing airport city centre service is the problem, they've had over a decade to sort it out - surely there has been a contract renewal during that time where they could've changed things? Indeed I have a vague memory of the operator changing and the previous operator trying to run are competing service for a while, so that suggests the contract has changed in the last few years.

I really struggle to believe that there are any insurmountable obstacles to them starting a bus. I just tend to conclude that they've just not got much in the way of business sense, or just don't care.