Edinburgh

[Clive]

By Davieboy’s logic all of the USA services could just as easily operate from GLA rather than EDI. Maybe they will one day as change is the only certainty.

A simplistic take which would be true only if all other things were equal. But they're not: the higher disposable income in EDI's catchment compared to GLA's and relative attractiveness of the two cities to foreigners tilts the balance in EDI's favour.

True. But as you say, there’s only a bawhair of a distance between the two facilities, especially for our intrepid North American visitors. Who knows, new owners could pitch up at GLA and do the same thing that has happened in the last 20 years, only in reverse.

To be fair, niche long haul services effectively have larger catchment areas than common European or domestic flights do.

[GeorgeNTravels]

By Davieboy’s logic all of the USA services could just as easily operate from GLA rather than EDI. Maybe they will one day as change is the only certainty.

A simplistic take which would be true only if all other things were equal. But they're not: the higher disposable income in EDI's catchment compared to GLA's and relative attractiveness of the two cities to foreigners tilts the balance in EDI's favour.

Other than the fact the CAA studies prove the average income of GLA passengers based in the Glasgow is 5k higher than EDI and the income of international pax to both airports was within £100 of each other.

[Clive]

There's not a huge amount any new owners could do to alter the fundamentals of the catchment though. They can't make the population richer, the M8 less congested or the city of Edinburgh less attractive to tourists.

Would AGS sell off GLA anyway? And if not, how attractive is AGS to a potential suitor? A is an airport serving basically a large town, with demand created by an industry whose best days are behind it, G we discuss here to death and S is a small niche airport in the shadow of two much larger ones.

I've not seen any chat about a potential purchase of all or part of AGS over all the time of its existence. There's bound to have been some approaches over the years, but usually rumours of at least some of these things leak and I'm not aware of any.

Bearsden tells us that there is a financial reckoning on the horizon. Presumably that could potentially lead to a takeover. Hypothetical for now but we can’t just pick and choose the facts that suit us. Things can and do change, as has been illustrated over the last 20 years.

[Iain]

Yes, but those three things come back to money too: i.e.how much of it they think they could make by operating the route from EDI rather than staying at GLA.

The idea of a market being based somewhere for flights such as MCO is wrong. It's the kind of flight most of their customers take once (or at most twice) a year so travelling an extra 30 minutes or so to access the service at a different airport is neither here nor there.

And maybe they analysed the postcodes of the passengers for their GLA service and realised that running the service from EDI would make no appreciable difference to their customers' surface travel times?

The EDI route shop entry quotes 35% of pax on GLA-Orlando direct services:

http://www.therouteshop.com/profiles/edinburgh-airport/

I realise the figures are relatively old, but interesting nevertheless. It also gives 48k indirects.

In comparison, GLA management give 55k indirects to Orlando in this article:

https://www.anna.aero/2019/04/03/glasgo ... -scotland/

You need to remember that Virgin (and all other airlines) have access to way more accurate and extensive data than you do and will have acted in an economically rational way when analysing that data and choosing where to allocate their capital. There is no way they made their decision about moving to EDI on the basis of cheaper landing fees. They know infinitely more about how to run their business than you do.

That's undoubtedly true, but I think we should be careful of straying into the fundamental argument that people with no specialist qualifications/knowledge of something have no right or ability to question those persons or organisations that do.

To come back to airlines, whilst they of course have very significant knowledge, data and highly qualified and experienced staff, this still does not insulate or prevent them from making bad business decisions and there are a wealth of examples (and defunct airlines!) to demonstrate this.

When we look at route dev specifically then of course we often have the benefit of hindsight in judging the success or otherwise of an airline route. However, In I think most of us can think of route dev decisions that appeared questionable even to us when they were made that turned out exactly that - and it appears that VS EDI-BGI is one of them. Despite VS knowing "infinitely more" than us it doesn't appear to have helped them this time!

Also comparing their service at EDI now to what they operated at GLA pre-Covid could be misleading as there isn't a counterfactual to compare against. You don't know what they would have operated at GLA this summer had they stayed (and I mean operated rather than what they had on sale prior to moving).

That's true, we can't judge the route on one summer (barring an abysmal failure, which clearly isn't going to happen).

However, we should also consider that the VS EDI route may also be helped by the lack of choice and capacity to MCO from GLA and as such limited competition, so I'd suggest we also can't really judge many of the factors we're discussing here without seeing how it stacks up if GLA gets a competing MCO scheduled service.

Whether or not we agree about it stacking up for VS to move to EDI, the numbers I've posted - and historical figures at GLA - surely shows there is demand for more MCO service than we currently have.

There's not a huge amount any new owners could do to alter the fundamentals of the catchment though. They can't make the population richer, the M8 less congested or the city of Edinburgh less attractive to tourists.

I'd argue that they don't need to alter the catchment area - what needs to be done is to compete better for the pax flows that are already flowing to and from the catchment but are using PIK and EDI instead of GLA. This would not make GLA bigger than EDI (and I am not looking for, or expecting, that to happen) but it would improve things significantly.

[Bearsden]

Well I thought there was something interesting taking off from Glasgow a few minutes ago . . . but no, ACA806 B788 descending through the 23 approach closely followed by DAL122 B763 through the 05 approach

[Gla1]

Looks like EDI-STN could be returning with Ryanair in winter. Flight times aren’t the best though so I’d assume it’s aimed more at the leisure traveller?

https://simpleflying.com/ryanair-mainla ... ic-return/

[Iain]

Maybe, or perhaps the timetable will improve in future?

FR made big play of APD being a major reason for dropping GLA flights. If domestic APD is reduced they're effectively getting what they claimed they'd been denied at GLA previously, so we might hope they might reconsider at least wrt GLA-STN.

[Clive]

Maybe, or perhaps the timetable will improve in future?

FR made big play of APD being a major reason for dropping GLA flights. If domestic APD is reduced they're effectively getting what they claimed they'd been denied at GLA previously, so we might hope they might reconsider at least wrt GLA-STN.

Yes, if they can do EDI-STN they can do STN-GLA. In fact they can build a new GLA base around that like they did last time. At it’s peak GLA-STN carried many thousands of pax (don’t remember the figures) and these were not replaced by easyJet after FR left the route. A classic example of how FR can get people to fly who otherwise might not.

[GKirk]

Glasgow still also only served once per hour by train from London Euston (the bi-hourly Euston via Brum train hasnt returned). The passengers are there...

[atuk]

One for my abiding memories of STN was the PIK service being reduced to a midday departure afternoon arrival then it was ditched!

EDI Friday nights when I finished my last KL flight with two STN the 8888 and 8824 back to back and then the afternoon half of my TCX friends turned up to deadhead when the GLA 321s were operating there for the English peak summer.