Prestwick Airport expansion hampered by ‘unprofessional’ railway service
27.07.08
Plans by Prestwick Airport to more than double in size over the next decade are to be announced shortly, but the airport says the plans depend on improvements to the ‘unprofessional’ train service to Glasgow, the Herald reports.
The airport's master plan, which will be published within the next two months, aims to raise passenger numbers beyond five million a year from last year's 2.4 million. But with as many as 450,000 passengers a year either unable to get a train or bus from Glasgow early enough for their flight or landing after the last bus or train has gone in the evenings, the airport is worried its main customer, Ryanair, will be discouraged from adding new Prestwick routes, the newspaper reports.
Graeme Sweenie, the airport's group general manager for commercial and property, told the Herald: ‘Most of our growth will come through based aircraft Ryanair planes that spend the night at the airport and cover the early morning and late-night flights, so it will be a problem that's continually growing. Ryanair's decision to base here is driven by passenger demand and that's directly related to how easy it is to get to Prestwick.’
The airport also feels restricted by the fact that rush-hour trains regularly arrive at the airport from Ayr already full to capacity, and that the train service drops from half-hourly to hourly on Sunday evenings - a key time for people returning from weekend city breaks or arriving from abroad for Monday morning business.
This encourages Scottish passengers to park their cars at the airport, placing extra traffic on the roads, while large numbers of foreign visitors have to rely on expensive taxis or the slow early morning / late-night airport bus.
The airport wants longer train operating hours to cover the first and last flights of the day; more trains than the current two an hour, especially during peak times; and an express service that misses out many stops between the airport and Glasgow Central station. With these changes, it believes it could raise the proportion of passengers that use the train from 20% to 30% each year - an increase of 200,000.
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