MORE than a week has passed since the Scottish Government announced plans to take over the running of Prestwick Airport, and it's still hard to find many industry watchers convinced by the case for public ownership.

Politically, it's pretty clear the SNP administration at Holyrood would be loathe to plunge the 1700 people whose jobs depend directly or indirectly on the Ayrshire base into unemployment with less than 12 months to go until the referendum. It would deal a devastating blow to a region which already struggles with more than its fair share of deprivation, with a ripple effect for the whole economy if Scottish Government figures claiming the airport was responsible for generating more than £60m for the country's economy last year are accurate.

The political rationale might be cynical, but the social and economic case seem hard to deny.

So why the lukewarm response from economists and aviation experts?

Stuart McIntyre, an economist at Strathclyde university's Business School wrote that "keeping the airport on state-sponsored life support because we wish to deny reality is not a long-term strategy".

As he points out, comparing the Prestwick scenario to Cardiff Airport or the publicly-owned Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL) - both referenced by Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in her address to parliament -doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

The HIAL example -- a network of 11 small airports including Inverness -is a valuable public service for remote communities, but it's not profitable.

"Last year, while recording the highest passenger numbers for four years, HIAL made an operating loss of £896,000", said Mr McIntyre.

As for Cardiff Airport - recently taken over by the Welsh Assembly - it is "too difficult to compare to the Prestwick situation", added Mr McIntyre. Cardiff is an international airport, on a par with Glasgow, and it is also Wales's only airport providing long-haul routes. Prestwick operates just one airline, Ryanair, to 27 destinations in Ireland and continental Europe and has been running at a loss of £2m a year.

It certainly has its advantages - a direct rail link from the airport to Glasgow, the fog-free conditions that make it ideal for diverted flights, and the longer runways capable of accommodating more and larger aircrafts. But all this only emphasises the point raised by aviation analyst Douglas McNeill inThe Herald last week: if Infratil, an experienced and successful commercial outfit couldn't make it work, what makes the Scottish Government think it can turn it around?

Whether it survives as a passenger airport, most experts believe it will be retained in a semi-military capacity at least. Besides the notorious CIA rendition flights, the airport was crucial for arriving statesmen when Scotland played host to the G8 summit in 2005.

Keeping Prestwick alive for now in a bid to find out if it's salvageable seems the right decision, but as one analyst put it: "Whether that's a good reason to pump public money into it long-term is another question."