BAA ‘more likely to sell Glasgow Airport’
21.02.10
Pressure on BAA to sell Glasgow Airport is to intensify after new figures revealed it is lagging behind Edinburgh in winning new airlines and passengers, the Scotsman reports. While Edinburgh has managed to fill the gap left by the collapse of Scottish budget airline Flyglobespan, Glasgow is said to be struggling to replace the lost flights.
A spokesman for Edinburgh told the newspaper new routes and extra flights added by airlines this month, including Ryanair and Jet2, had replaced the 400,000 passengers a year brought to the airport by Flyglobespan. Glasgow Airport, however, had a larger number of Flyglobespan customers, more than 550,000, leaving it struggling to fill the deficit. A 'source' told the newspaper Glasgow would find it ‘difficult to get other carriers to commit to backfilling’ this year.
In December, the Competition Appeal Tribunal upheld BAA's appeal against the Competition Commission's ruling that it would have to sell Stansted as well as either Edinburgh or Glasgow. However John Strickland, an aviation analyst, told the newspaper that BAA had merely won a delay in the process and that the company's debt load would require the sale of airports whether the Competition Commission was able oto force the sales or not.
Stuart Barwood, an aviation analyst with Brolin Consulting, said Edinburgh's improving business made Glasgow the sale target. He told the Scotsman: ‘My gut feel is they (BAA] will want to keep Edinburgh. The one thing Edinburgh has is a good inbound destination. You get the high yielding passengers going through Edinburgh rather than Glasgow. Glasgow is much more Scottish people flying outbound. Edinburgh has a combination of two-way traffic which you need.’
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