Delta Air Lines

[Clive]

As many have pointed out EDI is only 40 miles from Glasgow. That is absolutely nothing to North American travellers. We need to be honest and ask why wouldn’t airlines like WestJet use EDI to serve Scotland. Or more pertinently what could GLA bosses do to sway those business decisions our way?

You haven’t addressed that. I still think it’s easy for use to sit at home and claim GLA bosses are failures but we are not working in the hard nosed reality of multi million pound business decisions.

Of course we all want GLA to fulfill its full potential - that’s why we have this discussion group - but I always find it quite unfair to put a label of malaise or unprofessionalism on the GLA bosses when in fact they want and need every success far more than we do. To state that other route development teams are just better at their job is unfair IMO, without regard to the real world they have to work in.

As for the historical changes, you know well that in 1990 EDI was nowhere near capable of accepting the PIK transatlantic traffic or the boom that followed. BAA were quick to build the west pier at GLA to allow that while EDI remained a sleepy hollow for another decade. Indeed only in the last decade or so has it had the infrastructure that has enabled the rash of North American summer services it now has.

Nail. Head. The establishment of the parliament changed everything. The international profile of Edinburgh was transformed amongst other changes.

Anything else, AGS, Dewar etc is almost irrelevant.

GLA didn't have the facilities in 1990 but the airlines indicated that they wanted to move there so they were built. Not ONE airline indicated a preference for EDI.

You could count EDI’s international schedules on one hand in those days so it wasn’t a player. It is now, and that’s something the bosses at GLA have to work within the reality of.

Flying long haul was relatively expensive in the 70’s and 80’s. PIK’s traffic was largely VFR and scheduled fuel stops. Volume tourism to Scotland from the USA wasn’t thing then as we know it now. Nor was it to anywhere in Europe.

It’s amazing how vastly the entire air travel industry has changed over that short period of time. We’ve got to remember that those of us who were observers in the 1970’s were witnessing the mass market package holiday industry in its infancy. Of course things developed and changed since then, now travel is more accessible to more people and things like movies and social media have helped Scotland attract overseas visitors.

[Iain]

As many have pointed out EDI is only 40 miles from Glasgow. That is absolutely nothing to North American travellers. We need to be honest and ask why wouldn’t airlines like WestJet use EDI to serve Scotland. Or more pertinently what could GLA bosses do to sway those business decisions our way?

Because it's a large market in itself, with 600 pax pdew - and north of 135k inbound US visitors a year visiting Glasgow!

Westjet only started serving Scotland in 2016. What did those in charge at GLA say/offer to them then that they picked GLA over EDI?

DL came to GLA in iirc 2017 - after they'd already started serving EDI. What did the then GLA management do to sway that? Clearly it was successful.

AC came back to GLA around the same time. Again they were already serving EDI and clearly GLA were able to sway them to serve GLA too.

Clearly N American airlines can be swayed to serve GLA as well as (or instead of) EDI because it has happened in recent history! - despite castles and old towns and long, long after the establishment of Holyrood and appropriate facilities at EDI.

So the suggestion that it's practically impossible for those in charge at GLA to sway N American airlines to serve GLA is baseless and disproved by recent history and GLA management's own recent prdecessors!

Indeed, it's clear that even AGS and their CEO don't agree with the argument that airlines can't be swayed to GLA, cause even they themselves have repeatedly said returning direct scheduled US flights is a major target!

You haven’t addressed that.

What's consistently not been addressed is the point that I and many other posters have made again and again and again in this forum. Namely that the change that we're complaining about is something that took place in 2020, pre and post covid - Not in 1103 when edinburgh castle was built, not in 1999 when Holyrood opened, but 2020.

Why? Why was GLA able to have scheduled flights to the USA - and as mentioned above, attract North American carriers up to that point - and then after that they all disappeared and it's now apparently impossible to get them back.

This is the crucial fundamental point and it's routinely ignored because it doesn't fit with arguments about castles and parliaments.

I still think it’s easy for use to sit at home and claim GLA bosses are failures but we are not working in the hard nosed reality of multi million pound business decisions.

Of course we all want GLA to fulfill its full potential - that’s why we have this discussion group - but I always find it quite unfair to put a label of malaise or unprofessionalism on the GLA bosses when in fact they want and need every success far more than we do. To state that other route development teams are just better at their job is unfair IMO, without regard to the real world they have to work in.

I'm criticising GLA bosses because when we benchmark (something that businesses do a lot in the "real world") the airport against many of its peers it the UK and Europe (not including EDI!) it is performing poorly, with poor connectivity and pax numbers.

I'm criticising GLA bosses because they they themselves said GLA has a connecttivity deficit which they've failed to resolve.

I'm criticising GLA bosses because they themselves have publicly mentioned a whole lot of route development priorities and requirements and they've literally failed to deliver on any of them.

I'm criticising GLA bosses because important people like Stuart Patrick and large players like barrhead travel are clearly concerned about what's happening at the airport and suggesting they're failing to even cater for existing, demonstrable demand.

And it’s no longer the fact that they’ve taken GLA services but they’ve quadrupled the market to a level that even MAN eyes with envy.

The article I quoted shows clearly that they haven't quadrupled the market and much of the growth they've experienced has come from relocating airlines/routes/pax from GLA. The CAA stats will tell a similar story.

It’s because Scotland and Edinburgh in particular is chiming as a must see destination with tourists in ways it didn’t 30 years ago, as air travel and tourism has developed.

Yes, we're experiencing an inbound tourism boom to Scotland, particularly in terms of inbound US tourism. Such a phenomenon should be a massive gift for GLA - as Scotland's 2nd largest airport serving a city proven to be very popular with US visitors, and the gateway to the W Highland and Islands - But instead It's almost completely passing it by.

How come 10 years ago when Glasgow had less US tourists it had a number of scheduled flights to the USA and now 10 years later, when it has demonstrably more more US visitors, it has none? Quite obviously it's not an issue of lack of US visitors to Glasgow.

Btw, on MAN - If you look at the tourism stats, Glasgow has consistently more American visitors than Manchester.

I’d be very pleasantly surprised if the new owners at GLA can land more than a daily New York hub and a leisure schedule to Orlando. Very surprised indeed. Cue Aer Lingus IMO.

I think most of us would be pretty happy with that at GLA. I don't think anybody's suggesing that it should have as many US serviceas as EDI.

Nail. Head. The establishment of the parliament changed everything. The international profile of Edinburgh was transformed amongst other changes.

Anything else, AGS, Dewar etc is almost irrelevant.

So the establishment of the parliament in Edinburgh transformed the international profile of Edinburgh and that's caused a boom at the airport serving that city - and indirectly made its neighbouring city and airport 50 miles to the west less attractive.That seems like a convincing argument on the face of it, but the issue is that we're have a very strong and clear comparator elsewhere in the UK, namely Wales.

The establishment of a similar parliament and devolved administration at Cardiff at the same point in time doesn't appear to have been transformational in terms of the international profile of Cardiff - and it definitely hasn't been transformational in terms of the performance of the city's airport, CWL which has struggled terribly and apparently came so close to closing that it had to be taken into public ownership to save it.

Meanwhile, CWL's main competitor to the West, BRS, has experienced a boom and has shown a quite amazing performance in terms of new routes and pax numbers (despite the fact it has no parliament and no castle, less foreign visitors than Glasgow, no rail/tram link and is notorious for poor road access and congestion).

So it appears that establishing a devolved administration is not a guarantee of enhanced international profile and a boom at the city's airport and other factors are probably relevant.

[Clive]

BRS has 11 based easyJet planes and 4 Ryanair, and not a huge deal else going on. It doesn’t have any London flights either and the only global gateway service it has this week is to AMS (plus DUB).

Give GLA an extra 9 based aircraft between Ryanair and easyJet and we’d be moving an extra 3.5 million pax per year. We’d have a 12 million pax airport. But BRS, as we’ve discussed before, serves a huge and relatively wealthy catchment from all over the south west of the UK. Their management must suck majorly as they have nothing to Canada or the UAE and no hub links to the USA. Maybe they are rank amateurs who only like easyJet. Or maybe the world’s airlines just have higher priorities to sweat their assets.

[Iain]

BRS has 11 based easyJet planes and 4 Ryanair, and not a huge deal else going on. It doesn’t have any London flights either and the only global gateway service it has this week is to AMS (plus DUB).

It doesn't have London flights because LHR is less than 2hrs drive away and the train from city centre to city centre is only 75mins. It's not a failure of the airport management.

Give GLA an extra 9 based aircraft between Ryanair and easyJet and we’d be moving an extra 3.5 million pax per year. We’d have a 12 million pax airport.

We certainly would, but we don't have those numbers of aircraft and there's no prospect of getting them.

But BRS, as we’ve discussed before, serves a huge and relatively wealthy catchment from all over the south west of the UK.

It does, but it's had that relative wealth for years, long before the airport took off, so other factors are at play. Moreover it doesn't have a castle, high tourist numbers, good surface access or any of the other things that apparently are essential at GLA for it to succeed.

Their management must suck majorly as they have nothing to Canada or the UAE and no hub links to the USA. Maybe they are rank amateurs who only like easyJet. Or maybe the world’s airlines just have higher priorities to sweat their assets.

The runway at BRS isn't that long, so that will have limited things to some extent wrt long haul.

I heard tell that QR may start BRS-DOH instead of restarting CWL - which in one announcement would give it as many year round long haul routes as GLA!

[Planeenthusiast]

A potential huge spanner in the works not only for Glasgow but Scottish airports more generally is the “rumoured” budget deal the SNP are allegedly about to announce. To get green votes they may be about to agree to massive increases in passenger taxes, only from Scotland. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. No secret that the extremist greens want to destroy the aviation sector. This is a devolved power I believe, so nothing to stop this happening. I hope this isn’t correct for the sake of the sector and jobs.

[Clive]

BRS has 11 based easyJet planes and 4 Ryanair, and not a huge deal else going on. It doesn’t have any London flights either and the only global gateway service it has this week is to AMS (plus DUB).

It doesn't have London flights because LHR is less than 2hrs drive away and the train from city centre to city centre is only 75mins. It's not a failure of the airport management.

No but it means BRS has a captive market for all those budget flights to cities all over Europe. Nor does it have an airport the size of EDI on its literal doorstep. (Before you say, yes I know the northern part of its catchment area is shared with BHX)

Of course if GLA didn’t have PIK in the mix (see what I did there?) and if EDI was 2 hours away instead of 1 we’d have more flights and more pax. But the reality is what it is. All airports that are smaller than GLA wish they were as big and had all of our services. It’s just natural.

[Clive]

A potential huge spanner in the works not only for Glasgow but Scottish airports more generally is the “rumoured” budget deal the SNP are allegedly about to announce. To get green votes they may be about to agree to massive increases in passenger taxes, only from Scotland. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. No secret that the extremist greens want to destroy the aviation sector. This is a devolved power I believe, so nothing to stop this happening. I hope this isn’t correct for the sake of the sector and jobs.

No need for concessions for the Greens as Labour’s Scottish branch have today been instructed to abstain from the budget vote unless Scot Gov commit to reversing his UK Govt’s Rape Clause policy by April Fools Day. That’s not just a rumour - it came directly from Anas “read my lips” Sarwar this morning.

[G-WATP]

Interesting article on this:

https://simpleflying.com/up-to-14-daily ... mmer-2025/

It carried 94,000 roundtrip passengers, with booking data showing that approximately 74% of passengers connected to another Delta flight in Atlanta. Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Memphis, St Louis, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Birmingham, and Nashville were the top 10 origins and destinations.

If MCO and TPA are top 2 connecting points then I suspect DL ATL might have more outbound pax than we think.

I'm not sure what 'we' think but the actual split in 2024 was 89% US citizens, 11% non-US.

[FlyGLA]

Well Americans have never been know for having good taste.

[Iain]

A potential huge spanner in the works not only for Glasgow but Scottish airports more generally is the “rumoured” budget deal the SNP are allegedly about to announce. To get green votes they may be about to agree to massive increases in passenger taxes, only from Scotland. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. No secret that the extremist greens want to destroy the aviation sector. This is a devolved power I believe, so nothing to stop this happening. I hope this isn’t correct for the sake of the sector and jobs.

Can you point me towards a source for those rumours - specifically wrt to increases in APD?

As far as I understood, provisions for devolving APD were made a number of years ago, including appropriate legislation, but to my knowledge the Scottish Government has not taken those powers up due to issues with the Highland and Islands exemption. As such I believe APD in Scotland continues to be administered at Westminster and the only increases planned are those announced by Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her budget a few months ago.

https://www.gov.scot/policies/taxes/air ... 0ambitions.

Leaving that aside, as Clive has pointed out, the Labour party have announced they will acquiesce wrt to the budget, so a deal with the Greens would not appear necessary.

I'm not sure what 'we' think but the actual split in 2024 was 89% US citizens, 11% non-US.

That's interesting, could you give me link to where this information comes from?

Well Americans have never been know for having good taste.

Given Trump refused today to rule out invading Greenland, it might well be this whole discussion is rather moot.