PRESTWICK Airport will find it difficult to attract new airlines to boost passenger services after being sold, according to the man who oversaw its sale.
John Baillie, operations director at aviation consultancy MPD Group, said the Ayrshire airport needed to expand its route network and become less dependent on Ryanair to reverse the decline that has seen it lose a million passengers over the past four years.
But he said any bidders interested in buying the airport after it was put on the market last week would recognise this would be "extremely difficult".
"There are many more airports than airlines. The effort to get more airlines into airports is difficult as everyone is clamouring for new routes," he said.
"It would be extremely difficult to bring in new carriers to Prestwick but not impossible. There are probably fewer carriers operating through the UK airports than five or 10 years ago because there have been some big failures such as Flyglobespan."
Glasgow Prestwick International was purchased from Stagecoach for £33.4 million by New Zealand infrastructure company Infratil and Omniport, which sold its minority stake in the firm in 2003.
Infratil announced the sale of Prestwick, together with Kent airport, last week after admitting it was under-performing.
Experts say Scotland's fourth largest airport is likely to fetch less than £10m, though a clearer picture is expected to emerge in the coming weeks as bids are put together.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article