Letter in Today's The Herald

[buddyboy]

Should also be noted the Edinburgh City region is much higher on that metric too.... Doesn't explain all but gives another underlying factor.

[Clive]

Should also be noted the Edinburgh City region is much higher on that metric too.... Doesn't explain all but gives another underlying factor.

Indeed: £21,077 for the record. You're right that it doesn't explain all, but it explains a lot and acceptance of this fact would reduce the angst some of our congregation feel about the relative performance of the two airports.

Agree that people should look at the hard nosed economic facts and that on most metrics Edinburgh has it good.
However the city statistics may skew the facts when it comes to airport use as the two cities have different make ups. Much of Glasgow’s wealth is in the suburbs which can be outwith the city council area.

[Clive]

However the city statistics may skew the facts when it comes to airport use as the two cities have different make ups. Much of Glasgow’s wealth is in the suburbs which can be outwith the city council area.

Which is why I quoted data for the wider city regions. The Glasgow City Region contains the following eight councils: East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow City Council, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire, and West Dunbartonshire.

So the facts aren't skewed at all.

Oh ok. So £18k is the average in this city region. I suppose then we have to consider the volume and income of active travellers in each region rather than lumping in the (sometimes poorer) households who don’t fly.

But as you say, the airports and airlines will have all of the statistics they need to analyse every last bit of this.

[Iain]

@Iain

You forgot to mention the ONS's Gross Disposable Household Income statistics (provisional 2019 figures below):

West of England Combined Authority: £21,722
Glasgow City Region: £18,323

Those numbers go a long way to explaining the disparity you bemoan. I used city regions as a proxy for an airport's catchment.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/regional ... onsoftheuk

These figures may give some insight into why currently BRS may have more pax than GLA, but as I'm sure you've already noticed back in 2006 (and every year since) there was a similar disparity in GDNI between the WoE CA and the Glasgow CR, for instance:

2006
West of England Combined Authority: £14769
Glasgow City Region: £13363

As such, applying the argument relating to GDNI being a major (if not primary) determinator of airport pax numbers, we would have expected BRS to have as many (if not more) pax than GLA in 2006 and every year since. Yet instead back then it had 3.1m pax less than GLA. So can you explain how the above GDNI disparity in 2006 led to GLA having 60% more pax than BRS, but a similar disparity in 2019 leads to BRS having more?

As ! stated in my earlier post, I have purposely avoided making my major comparison to Edinburgh and looked at other UK airports, but seeing as it has been introduced to the discussion, we should note that we see similar patterns in the data for the Edinburgh city region, with a consistent disparity between the city regions going back right through the data. So again the same issue arises - How did the GDNI disparity in 2006 result in EDI having 200k less pax than GLA and a similar disparity in 2019 results in it having 5.9m more?

To look at I think I'm another angle, even if we leave aside the other airports and look at GLA we still come me back around to the question of how a 37% growth in GDNI in the Glasgow City Region has produced essentially zero growth at GLA, whilst similar GDNI growth in other city regions has produced large amounts of pax/% growth at their airports?

I don't want to overcomplicate, but as I mentioned LBA earlier we could also note that the W Yorkshire Combined Authority has a GDNI lower than that of Glasgow City Region (£17347 v £18323) and experienced a 36% GDNI increase 2006-2019 (virtually the same as Glasgow City Region). As highlighted earlier Leeds also has vastly fewer foreign visitors ad Glasgow - yet LBA has increased it's pax numbers by 1.2m/43% during that period.

These figures are particularly interesting and what is notable to me is that whilst the Glasgow city region may have lower GDNI than those of Edinburgh and Bristol, the numbers in comparison to many other UK cities and their surrounding regions come up reasonably well.

Lastly, can I ask if you fundamentally agree or disagree with my point that we (and the airport's management) should judge GLA by benchmarking against other UK and European airports? If the answer is no, then can you explain why not - and if the answer is yes, but EDI and BRS are not suitable comparators, then what airports in the UK/Europe do offer a valid comparison?

[Clive]

Quick note, not to usurp Davieboy’s reply: LBA isn’t an ideal comparator. It’s home to Jet2 and they have something like 14 based 738’s which are all doing 2 rotations per day. Apart from 2 based Ryanair’s they don’t have a glut of anything GLA doesn’t. In fact GLA has a lot more when it comes to services suiting inbound pax.

And BRS has no real competition in a vast and wealthy catchment area. Obviously if its flights were split with another nearby airport it would be that much smaller.

[hads]

A lot of preparation in this thread.
However. My question as to why the disparity.
Im long of the opinion its just one big Scottish ( CENTRAL BELT) pie chart.
Ive not seen or read anything to sway me otherwise.
So heres the nub of it,

Ten Years ago, how many Glasgow ( and surrounding) pax flew from Edinburgh?
What is the number today?

I know virtually hundreds of people now using Edinburgh as departure point.Myself included. And that was most certainly not always the case.

[atuk]

Again following this debate with interest.


As a charter boy who handled charter flight programmes for ATUK for many years BRS and CWL had an ace card which GLA never had; a charter airline with base and HQ on site. That doesn’t matter? Well consider Paramount Airways long gone who had MD83s based at BRS and Inter European Airways at CWL.the former went bust but created an increase into total traffic acting as a catalyst for Air 2000, Britannia and Airtours to add services. inter European, owned by Aspro Travel, merged with Airtours creating their enlarged Cardiff base.

Glasgow had never had the advantage of having a based charter airline headquarters there. Yes we had multiple Britannia, Monarch and in later years Thomas Cook but these operations never had the advantage which an HQ brings; maintenance, commercial, in house operation of ground services and sales, marketing and planning. EMA had Orion Airways then later TEA Uk and Excalibur.

Bristol has expended thanks to the M5 with a catchment area up towards BHX encompassing some of the wealthiest towns and villages in the country as well as cashed in on the M4 corridor eastwards towards Berkshire and Bucks. It’s the airport of choice for the Southwest again thanks to the M5 and South Wales again thanks to the M4 and Severn Bridges.

What we have to face is that we, in Scotland have a small population and by comparison are overall less wealthy than certain parts of England. All these items play their part. Bearsden alluded to the corporate HQ based in the South West and by comparison we have very few in Scotland -at least as far as FTSE companies go.

So the only way GLA can go forward is build on what we have and provide excellence in the way of customer service, competitive pricing and show innovation. Build on TUI, EI, FI, EZY, BE and LM.

Working the other day I heard a call for Florence for BACF. that could easily be a service run from GLA however like LS for JTR and JSI the services have been placed in EDI instead. Why? Higher disposable income per capita in the east?

[Iain]

Because of a structural changes in the airline industry. Low cost carriers have represented a growing share of UK airport capacity since they started to become serious players around the turn of the century.  Those structural changes take time to play out as airlines of the past era (eg Thomas Cook, Monarch) get replaced by those of the new so I don't think we would have expected that factor to have the same effect in 2006 as it does now.

Why?

Taking a trip on Thomas Cook or Monarch (or indeed practically any air journey where you had to pay your own fare) 15-20 years ago was just as much discretionary spending as somebody taking a trip on FR or EZY nowadays. The GDNI figures show us that back in 2006 people in the Edinburgh and Bristol Regions had a similarly superior capacity for discretionary spending as they have now. So just as the superior GDNI now may make them more able to afford the discretionary spend on FR or EZY flights, so back in 2006 it would have made them more able to afford flight/holidays on Thomas Cook/Monarch etc. Yet these airlines didn't show much interest in EDI particularly at that time and the wider airport pax numbers at both EDI and BRS in comparison to GLA that we've already discussed are inconsistent with that.

Low fares act as a stimulant to market demand and entice people to fly who may have otherwise spent their money on something else. Hence the LCCs are competing for people's discretionary spending (ie things they don't have to spend money on but choose to do so). So it stands to reason than LCCs will fare better - all other things being equal - in areas where people have more money available to spend.

The structural changes in the airline industry over the last 20 years explain a lot of the growth we've seen at many airports throughout the UK and Europe, but I'm afraid I don't particularly see how they explain the inconsistency in the data that I've highlighted.

Why the disparity around 2006?  Because up until the early 2000s BRS didn't have much LCC traffic and was reliant on people like BA Connect, who didn't have the types of aircraft that would allow fares to be dropped to levels that stimulated demand. You can see that effect at work in BRS's ATM data which showed that they have dropped from around 85k in 2006 to 70k in 2019 while passenger numbers have increased.

Yes, BRS have rapidly expanded their pax numbers over the period in question by getting a lot of business, capacity and routes from the LCC carriers, which has dramatically widened their route network and made travel to and from BRS much cheaper. I don't think there is really any debate on that point. To go back to the tourism stats I mentioned earlier it appears this has perhaps also had the knock on effect of driving foreign visitor growth in Bristol and surrounds.

So the question is why hasn't GLA done the same? Of course it has lower GDNI and this will have provided a somewhat more limited potential than at BRS, but surely there is still a reasonable capacity. Or are we saying that the lower GDNI compared to Bristol (and Edinburgh) is sufficient to completely kill the opportunity? I'm not sure that would particularly stand up, because we can cite other airports in the UK serving city regions with a consistently lower GDNI the Glasgow that have similarly expanded their traffic mainly via LCCs.

The same issue as at BRS with the added factor of GLA and EDI being divested from the same owner.   Ryanair's David O'Brien clearly thought the disparity in income worth mentioning at their GLA base closure press conference (about 18 minutes into this
https://www.facebook.com/TheScotsmanNew ... ?app=fbl)

So what are your thoughts on the BAA breakup? Were BAA doing a good job at both airports? Was the breakup good or bad for GLA and EDI?

Wrt to the FR press conference I have to say my general tendency is to take anything which FR say to the press with a large pinch of salt. His comments re bring "promised" an APD reduction raise questions that I have commented on before.

Wrt the talk about disposable income, it doesn't appear to be the main thrust of his spiel and he does not refer to statistics. I'd also come back to something I said previously. Among the routes that were culled due all the factors he cites: APD/Brexit/Inbound demand /disposable income, were ALC, AGP and CRL. Yet a few months later these were reinstated, apparently after talks between FR and GLA. The point here is that APD/Brexit/Inbound demand/disposable income in the catchment hadn't changed and yet they were still reinstated, which clearly then calls into question those reasons being given for their withdrawal in the first place.

As I've said already I don't disagree fundamentally with higher disposable income helping airlines and airports, but I am raising questions around that. Wrt FR we might also note that they operate bases at LBA, LPL and NCL which all have lower GDNI (and less foreign visitors), so the claim that there is not sufficient disposable income or inbound tourism at GLA for FR to base again raises questions in light of that.

To look at I think I'm another angle, even if we leave aside the other airports and look at GLA we still come me back around to the question of how a 37% growth in GDNI in the Glasgow City Region has produced essentially zero growth at GLA, whilst similar GDNI growth in other city regions has produced large amounts of pax/% growth at their airports?

I don't want to overcomplicate, but as I mentioned LBA earlier we could also note that the W Yorkshire Combined Authority has a GDNI lower than that of Glasgow City Region (£17347 v £18323) and experienced a 36% GDNI increase 2006-2019 (virtually the same as Glasgow City Region). As highlighted earlier Leeds also has vastly fewer foreign visitors ad Glasgow - yet LBA has increased it's pax numbers by 1.2m/43% during that period.

While LBA has increased its passenger numbers over that period, its growth has failed to keep pace with growth in the overall market. The CAA data shows it had 1.4% of the overall UK market in 2014 dropping to 1.3% in 2019.  So although it has grown its passenger numbers it has done so at a lower rate than the UK market as a whole. In that same period, GLA's figure decreased from 3.2% to 3%, so I don't see a wild disparity in the two airports' performances - the market share of both has eroded.

But the time period that I was talking about was from 2006. 2014 just happens to coincide with FR moving into GLA and the airport as a result experiencing a (relatively short lived) growth spurt, so the figures look better. Assessments over a longer period help eliminate the influence of short term factors.

Additionally, whilst comparing to the overall market is of course a valid comparison, it means that the numbers - and particularly the percentage changes - are very small and thus give the appearance that they are trifling. But when we consider the pax numbers at GLA (and LBA) and the size of the total UK air market, the numbers are not trifling.

It seems you're essentially arguing an airport that grew its pax numbers by 43% 2006-2019 is not doing any better than one that's produced pretty much no growth over the same time period. I'm sorry, but you're going to struggle to convince me of that!

Comparing GLA's performance to other airports may be a useful exercise in some ways but all airports differ in various important ways, such as the make up of their catchment, surface access (to the airport and within the wider market) and the distance to competing airports making direct airport to airport comparisons of limited value (so I'm a bit wary of the Kremlinology of BRS and LBA above).

I'm not sure that there's one indicator that allows two airports to be directly compared. Airport owners will no doubt place more importance on financial indicators than on raw passenger numbers for example, so any reasonable comparison would require a rounded set of comparators. Anyway, I've typed enough on this and will leave it to others to continue any discussion.

Airports are of course businesses and its important to those that ultimately own them that they are profitable. More generally profitability is likely to be a general indicator of an airports health. Nevertheless, that's probably not the primary indicator that most people outside the owners/management of the airport - including myself and probably many other posters here - are concerned with. I look to the airport as an economic asset to the city region to drive tourism and business growth and that generally means the more pax the better. So as such I would see pax numbers as the most important stat.

Moreover, when GLA was doing relatively well 2014-2018 it was notable that those in charge seemed very happy to talk about passenger numbers (as opposed to profitability) as a the main performance metric that demonstrated the airport's good performance. If those numbers now don't look so good they can't credibly then switch to saying they're not so important.

Whilst of course we need to take relevant factors into account, personally I am of the opinion that GLA absolutely should be benchmarked against other airports. How many businesses don't care about or measure how their doing versus their competitors?

As a charter boy who handled charter flight programmes for ATUK for many years BRS and CWL had an ace card which GLA never had; a charter airline with base and HQ on site. That doesn’t matter? Well consider Paramount Airways long gone who had MD83s based at BRS and Inter European Airways at CWL.the former went bust but created an increase into total traffic acting as a catalyst for Air 2000, Britannia and Airtours to add services. inter European, owned by Aspro Travel, merged with Airtours creating their enlarged Cardiff base.

It may have helped CWL historically, but any benefit it may have had has surely worn off long ago. We may complain about GLA, but compared to CWL its positively thriving!

So the only way GLA can go forward is build on what we have and provide excellence in the way of customer service, competitive pricing and show innovation. Build on TUI, EI, FI, EZY, BE and LM.

Other than getting FR back in the door, I would generally agree with that, but I don't see much in the way of these things.

Ten Years ago, how many Glasgow ( and surrounding) pax flew from Edinburgh?
What is the number today?

I know virtually hundreds of people now using Edinburgh as departure point.Myself included. And that was most certainly not always the case.

The passenger surveys that are regularly carried out by the CAA collect dats for the region/local authority origin and destination of pax using the airports. The CAA generally release some of the data for free with more detailed data being available for a fee. In previous years the free data included the O&D data we're interested in. However, the last time I looked at the 2018 survey (the last one including GLA/EDI/PIK) it appears they haven't included this data in the free release - and I'm not particularly inclined to cough up to see it!

If we're putting numbers to the amount of people that are going to/from Glasgow city via EDI, we could perhaps do a calculation based on the frequency/capacity of the bus service. The problem is we have no idea of the average pax load on the bus service, so we could only do a calculation based on guesswork.

Anecdotally, as you mention it does appear the numbers have grown significantly and I think most of us have the same anecdotes.

Of course, we shouldn't forget PIK. The same issues come up with the CAA survey, but even without it I think we can be pretty sure that a very large amount of pax at PIK are from the GLA catchment.

[Bearsden]

Some very interesting views . . . a good read

I've just downloaded the CAA statistics for 2009 & 2019 and started comparing them . . . and not surprisingly the story is in the numbers

Taking international passengers 2019 v 2009 - EDI Up 5.3m 127%, GLA Up 1.5m 44%, PIK Down 0.7m 53%

I'll extract a few more tables over the next couple of days but here is Glasgow's top 15 new international destinations between 2009 & 2019 over 25,000 passengers per annum - and I think their current 2022 status (Piper One and/or ATUK can confirm) - 593,000 passengers in 2019 but only 330,000 based on today's operating routes
FRANKFURT 94,124
MUNICH 46,694 Non Op 2022
BUCHAREST 46,652 Non Op 2022
KRAKOW 40,352
ENFIDHA 39,393 Non Op 2022
NEW YORK (JFK) 38,104 Non Op 2022
WROCLAW 37,360
BUDAPEST 36,588 Non Op 2022
PRAGUE 35,345
ROME 34,349
HALIFAX 30,357
VENICE 29,490
WARSAW 29,394
DUSSELDORF 28,485 Non Op 2022
CORK 26,505 Non Op 2022

One other set of comparatives caught my eye - that was the Canary Islands
ARRECIFE EDI 85,757 GLA 24,070 PIK 30,665
FUERTEVENTURA EDI 69,418 GLA 16,193 PIK 4,069
LAS PALMAS EDI 55,791 GLA -12,618 PIK 16,877
TENERIFE EDI 211,197 GLA -28,345 PIK 58,489

EDI 422,163 GLA -700 PIK 110,100

So over 0.25 million outbound passengers gained by EDI & PIK while GLA achieved zero

[atuk]

I can see a definite trend regards these figures and it points to a distinct lack of tour operator engagement.

Whilst TUI have dismally failed to address the capacity loss following the demise of Thomas Cook both Ryanair and easyJet been swift to add capacity from EDI which explains some destinations lacking from TUI such as FUE,HER and no new destinations such as Sardinia, Sicily and Skiathos and Santorini.

Those who know me well will know my extensive knowledge and experience of charter flight flying and that the life blood of charter is new destinations. That’s why SSH was such a success when launched 16 years ago by Thomas Cook and places like Cape Verde were popular once GLA flights were offered.

It saddens me to see TUI let business slip away to competitors but that’s exactly what has happened and the latest is the dearth of Lakes and Mountains destinations offered from GLA against EDI which is cashing in merrily on the likes of Lake Garda (MXP), Bavaria (MUC), Poland (KRK), Dolomites (TSF), Andorra (GRO).

Add to that Jet2 who have offered both Santorini and Skiathos from EDI but not GLA. Both these destinations have been crying out for a GLA departure and it would be interesting to see the leakage in past years to NCL, MAN and LGW where Scottish originating traffic is concerned.

Do we have the right aircraft in place? In the past Sardinia, Sicily and Pisa were operated by the likes of 1-11 and Comets; 119 seat aircraft, and EZY certainly use the 319 on these routes from EDI.
The seat only business has dissipated to FR, EZY and LS as TUI concentrate on packages rather than seat only but Thomas Cook we’re making big inroads to this before they collapsed ably demonstrated by the last return Miami Air 737 from HER carrying 164 home out as against an outbound load of 220 on a 321. A tour operator charter using a BACF Embraer would go a long way to creating new markets: Jerez, Murcia, Pisa, Rimini, Prevezza, Malta, Djerba, Tangiers, Lisbon and Oporto.

If only there was an innovative tour operator around like Airtours were back in the day it would be a different story. Meantime what we have is corporate culture by the spadeload but not folks who know and understand the basics of tour operating and vertical integration.

As an aside the past week has seen the TUI share price slide by around 20% following a share placement to part repay German Government funding in tranches so possibly much worse to follow.