PRESTWICK Airport is continuing to make losses but these are running at about half the rate they were when the Scottish Government was forced to intervene to save it from closure, the Deputy First Minister has revealed.
Nicola Sturgeon was giving evidence to Holyrood's Infrastructure And Capital Investment Committee on progress since taxpayers bought the ailing Ayrshire airport.
Labour's James Kelly said the Government was "making a substantial investment of public funds of over £20 million" in loans to keep the airport going.
He said the airport had been losing £800,000 a month when it came to the brink of closure and added: "The losses are continuing at least at the level when you took the airport over."
He also told Ms Sturgeon the recent blueprint for the airport's future "lacks detail and has no financial data or financial analysis to back up your case".
Ms Sturgeon accepted the airport was continuing to run at a loss after being bought over by the Scottish Government in a last-ditch effort to keep it open.
She said: "The accounts for 2013-14 will be published very shortly. The annual loss for 2013-14 will be in the region of £5m."
Before ministers stepped in, the airport was recording £800,000 a month in losses, equating to £9.6m a year.
She added: "The airport is running at a loss, the revenue support we are providing through loan funding is commensurate with that kind of scale of loss. The focus now is to try to reduce those losses and move the airport into profitability."
The Deputy First Minister said the vision document was the "strategy for taking the airport forward" as she called on rival politicians to "put the short-term party political bickering to one side and accept that we are trying to save an important strategic asset for the country".
She added: "If you think it was the wrong decision to save the airport, fine. We can have an honest disagreement on that, but at least have the courage to say so upfront."
SNP MSP Adam Ingram and local Conservative MSP John Scott both expressed concern about The Herald's story yesterday that two ground handling firms at Prestwick, Greer Aviation and Landmark Aviation, had been told their leases at the airport were being terminated and the work was being brought in-house by the airport management.
Ms Sturgeon explained a holding company with Government involvement had been set up to oversee long-term strategy but a separate operating company had been established for the day-to-day running of the airport, with former Air New Zealand chief executive Andrew Miller appointed to chair both.
Ms Sturgeon said that with the Government in a hands-off role in relation to the operating company it would be wrong for her to intervene on decisions it made and they had to be given the chance to turn round the fortunes of the airport, return to profitability and repay its Government loans.
Apart from increasing passenger numbers, freight tonnage, and customer spend at the airport, Prestwick is one of eight sites, six of them in Scotland, bidding to be the UK's first spaceport. Prestwick was in a "very good position" to win the bid, said Ms Sturgeon, but she said ministers could not make the Ayrshire site their preferred bidder at this early stage in the process.
Airport bosses have already said winning spaceport status "would be the catalyst for transformational change" at Prestwick. Ms Sturgeon said the Government must remain neutral at this stage of the contest, but hinted that position could change.
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