Tom Hunter take on SNP Prestwick Airport record shows some on to plums

Having written extensively on Prestwick Airport over years and decades, through ups and downs, it has been fantastic to see this great asset back on an upward trajectory in recent times.

The tiresome moaning over the Scottish Government’s 2013 rescue of Prestwick Airport through a £1 purchase from Infratil of New Zealand - and the advancing of tens of millions of pounds of loans in the drive for future prosperity - has certainly diminished in volume as fortunes have improved.

In December, the airport reported its sixth consecutive annual profit. Its operating profit in the year to March 31, 2025, was £3.5 million, up by around £300,000 on the prior 12 months.

And Prestwick Airport had a highly positive update at that stage on the current financial year to March 2026.

Chief executive Ian Forgie said in December: “For the current financial year, the business has exceeded last year’s performance, already achieving its annual operating target in the first six months to September 2025, and is continuing to build on its success this year.”

Perhaps not surprisingly given we live in demoralisingly polarised times politically, all the great news about Prestwick Airport still appears to irritate some. Personal political ideology, often seemingly including an intense dislike of the SNP Government, seems generally to be at the root of this continued carping.

This camp is hopefully diminishing in number as some realise they are on to plums with attempts to criticise what is clearly a success story and instead direct their ideological ire elsewhere.

The fact of the matter is that the airport is thriving.

And it is difficult to see how anyone could, with a straight face, claim that it would have been better if Prestwick Airport had been allowed to close with the loss of a huge amount of employment both in terms of direct staff and jobs in the aerospace cluster in and around the airport.

We should also remember all the tax revenues contributed since 2013 by those working in and around Prestwick Airport and their various employers.

Against this backdrop, it was great this week to hear Scottish entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter praise what has been achieved at Prestwick Airport.

Sir Tom, of course, is from Ayrshire. However, what is more significant in terms of his comments about Prestwick Airport is surely his own emphasis of the contrast between these positive views and what he thinks about government in general running businesses.

We should also bear in mind that Sir Tom has never been shy of criticising the Scottish Government where he believes this is warranted, as he did recently, to take just one example, in relation to pubs and business rates.

In short, the entrepreneur was providing his objective view on Prestwick Airport, based on what he saw on the ground.

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So what did Sir Tom, one of Scotland’s best-known business figures, have to say about Prestwick Airport and the aerospace cluster in and around it?

After flying into the airport last week, he posted on Tuesday on social media platform X: “I usually say that the government shouldn't be involved in running businesses. But I take my hat off to the Scottish Government when it comes to Prestwick Airport. Last week when I landed there I was thrilled to hear about all of the job opportunities across engineering, security and warehousing.”

In a video accompanying his post on X, Sir Tom provided further details of his take on the Scottish Government’s ownership of Prestwick Airport.

As he spoke to camera, he underlined his general view on government being involved in running businesses.

Sir Tom, whose West Coast Capital business is based at Dundonald in Ayrshire, said: “I always say that the government shouldn’t be involved in running businesses but I take my hat off to the Scottish Government here because if you hadn’t saved Prestwick, the great jobs that are all round there: Spirit..., you have got jet engines being refurbished, you have got Ryanair doing their maintenance, those engineering jobs would have been lost. So I think Prestwick is a good success story and a rare example of the government stepping in.”

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Prestwick Airport has increased its workforce greatly over the last year to in excess of 450, having achieved major success in winning scheduled e-commerce flights from China.

The airport, known officially as Glasgow Prestwick, highlighted in December how much is being invested to support its expansion ambitions.

Prestwick Airport said: “Overall, in the last 18 months the airport has reinvested £10m in the airfield, ground-services equipment and security to support its ambitious growth plans.”

And the airport declared it has been established as “an alternative UK cargo gateway for the Asian market”.

Mr Forgie said in December: “Cargo volumes are set to treble in 2025/26 with the airport currently handling 21 wide-bodied freighters a week and more than 3,800 tonnes of cargo a month. This has created more than 150 new jobs at the airport this year, generating new training opportunities and boosting growth for Ayrshire and the wider Scottish economy.”

And he observed that “additionally, this positions Prestwick Airport as a first-class export gateway for Scottish exports such as high-value seafood and whisky which are in high demand in mainland China and Hong Kong”.

It was only in February last year that Prestwick Airport’s head of cargo operations, Nico Le Roux, told me about the scale of the growth ambitions for this division.

He talked enthusiastically about the expansion plans as he took me on an airside tour just hours before the arrival of a major e-commerce flight operated by Hong Kong Air Cargo. This flight was a key milestone for the airport as it endeavoured to seize the opportunities from East Asia arising from the appetite among UK and Irish consumers for ordering goods on e-commerce platforms such as TikTok, Shein and Temu.

Since then, Prestwick Airport has won scheduled cargo services operated by major Chinese carriers from Guangzhou, Chengdu and Zhengzhou in China.

Mr Le Roux revealed last February that Prestwick Airport expected to more than treble cargo revenues to in excess of £10m a year, hailing e-commerce flights as a “game changer”.

Cargo revenues at the airport totalled £3.228 million in the year to March 31, 2024.

Mr Le Roux revealed his expectation that cargo revenues would be more than treble that level in the airport’s financial year to March 31, 2026, on the back of new business wins.

He confirmed such an increase would take annual cargo revenues into double-digit-millions of pounds.

It has been great to see these ambitions realised.

As well as the Scottish Government, Prestwick Airport’s management team and the hundreds of staff there, as well as the thousands of people employed by companies in the aerospace cluster, should take heart from Sir Tom’s words.

And such praise is most certainly warranted, when you look at all that has been achieved at Prestwick Airport and the success of the aerospace cluster in and around it.

Maybe one day the remaining detractors might take a closer look at what is actually going on at Prestwick Airport – rather than dwell on what they would like to see from their ideological perspective - and cheer up a little on this front.