Glasgow Airport & Bus
Leo.Chen
Glasgow International Airport (Background Information)
Glasgow International Airport (sometimes referred to as Glasgow Abbotsinch International Airport), located 13 km (8 miles) west of Glasgow, near the towns of Paisley and Renfrew, is the largest international airport in Scotland, and number five in the UK. Its IATA Airport Code is GLA, while its ICAO airport code is EGPF.
The airport is owned by BAA plc, which also owns London Heathrow Airport, London Gatwick Airport, London Stansted Airport, Edinburgh International Airport, Aberdeen Airport and Southampton Airport.
History
The history of Glasgow Airport goes back to 1932, when the current site at Abbotsinch was used as an overspill airfield for the adjacent RAF base. The original site of Glasgow's "main" airport was
13 km (2 miles) east, in what is now the Dean Park area of Renfrew. In the 1960s, Glasgow Corporation decided that a new airport for the city be constructed at Abbotsinch. It was a controversial plan, as central government had already committed millions into rebuilding Prestwick Airport fit for the "jet age". Nevertheless, the plan went forward and the new airport, designed by Basil Spence, was completed in 1966, with British European Airways beginning services using De Havilland Comet aircraft. The political rows over Glasgow and Prestwick airports continued, with Prestwick enjoying a monopoly over transatlantic traffic, while Glasgow was only allowed to handle domestic and intra-European traffic.
In 1975, the BAA took ownership of Glasgow Airport, and when BAA was privatised in the late 1980s, it had a serious cull of its airport portfolio. Conveniently, the restrictions on Glasgow were lifted, and the transatlantic operators immediately moved from Prestwick. BAA then sold Prestwick off, and embarked on a massive redevelopment plan in 1990
An extended terminal building was created by building the new structure so that the old terminal is actually inside it. The original concrete arches which looked onto the roadside now form the facade of the check-in area. Glasgow Airport now has 33 gates, bringing its capacity up to seven million passengers per year. In 2003, BAA announced that it was extending the St. Andrews Building, thus creating a "Terminal 2", the capacity need fuelled by the explosion of "no-frills" airlines.
Today
Glasgow is hampered against future growth by its location, which is constrained by the M8 motorway to the south, the town of Renfrew to the east, and the River Clyde to the north. At present the towns of Clydebank, Bearsden and Linwood all sit directly underneath the approach paths into the airport, meaning that further increases in traffic will be frowned upon. Politicians are looking at Edinburgh Airport as the more likely recipient of major investment. Glasgow also faces stiff competition from its old adversary at Prestwick, which has reinvented itself as a low-cost hub for budget airlines. Prestwick Airport is also stronger as it has a direct railway service straight to the terminal from Glasgow city centre, which ironically passes through Paisley Gilmour Street Railway Station, the place where passengers have to change to a connecting bus to get to Glasgow Airport. However, the Scottish Executive announced in 2002 that a rail link from Glasgow Central would extend out to Glasgow Airport. Currently, the airport is easily accessed by road due to the adjoining M8 motorway and is served by a frequent dedicated express bus from the city centre.
The airport is home to Scottish regional airline Loganair, a British Airways franchise operator, who have hangar facilities as well as their head office located on site. British Airways itself has a maintenance hanger at the airport, capable of carrying out overhaul work on Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 aircraft, as well as a cargo facility. Glasgow is also the main base for Flyglobespan and Air Scotland, though these carriers do not have major facilities on the airfield.
Airlines and destinations
- Aer Lingus (Dublin)
- Air Canada (Toronto) seasonal
- Air Malta (Malta)
- Air Scotland (Alicante, Amsterdam, Athens, M醠aga, Palma de Mallorca, Paris Charles de Gaulle)
- Air Transat (Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver) seasonal
- American Airlines (Chicago) seasonal
- bmi (Copenhagen, Jersey, Knock, Leeds/Bradford, London Heathrow, Manchester)
- bmibaby (Nottingham East Midlands)
- British Airways (London Gatwick, London Heathrow)
- British Airways (Citiexpress) (Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Southampton)
- British Airways (Loganair) (Aberdeen, Barra, Benbecula, Campbeltown, Cork, Galway, Inverness, Islay, Isle of Man, Kirkwall, Londonderry, Stornoway, Sumburgh, Tiree)
- BritishJet (Malta)
- CSA Czech Airlines (Prague)
- Continental Airlines (Newark)
- easyJet (Amsterdam, Belfast International, Bristol, London Stansted, Luton)
- Emirates (Dubai)
- Euromanx (Isle of Man)
- First Choice Airways (Alicante, Arrecife, Funchal, M醠aga, Paphos, Tenerife Reina Sof韆) year round (Faro, Palma de Mallorca, Reus) seasonal
- Flybe (Belfast City, Birmingham, Exeter, Guernsey, Jersey, Liverpool, Norwich, Southampton)
- Flyglobespan (Alicante, Barcelona, Faro, Las Palmas, Lanzarote, London Stansted, M醠aga, Nice, Paphos, Palma de Mallorca, Prague, Tenerife Reina Sof韆)
- Helios Airways (Larnaca) seasonal
- Icelandair (Reykjav韐 Keflavik)
- KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (Amsterdam)
- SN Brussels Airlines (Brussels)
- US Airways (Philadelphia) seasonal
- Zoom Airlines (Toronoto, Vancouver) year round (Calgary, Halifax, Ottawa) seasonal
Holiday Airlines
In addition to the scheduled services listed above, a number of holiday companies operate exclusive charter flights from Glasgow to a number of destinations in Europe, North America and Africa. The popular resorts of the Mediterranean, Canary Islands, Cyprus, the Greek Islands and Florida form the majority of destinations for these flights.
A number of airlines operate holiday flights from Glasgow, including First Choice Airways, Britannia Airways, Excel Airways, Thomas Cook Airlines, My Travel, Monarch Airlines, Futura Airlines, Spanair and Balkan Holidays.
Glasgow Prestwick International Airport (IATA: PIK, ICAO: EGPK) is a facility situated north of the town of Prestwick in Ayrshire, Scotland. Although officially called Glasgow Prestwick International Airport because Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, is only 46 km (29 miles) North-East of the airport, most people, particularly locals, refer to it simply as Prestwick Airport.
In physical terms, Prestwick remains Scotland's largest airfield, although in passenger traffic terms it sits in third place after Glasgow's main airport, Glasgow International and Edinburgh Airport, both of which are operated by BAA.
History
The airport began life around 1934 ?primarily as a training airfield ?with a hangar, offices and control tower being in place by the end of 1935. The airports original owners were David McIntyre, who was also the owner of Scottish Aviation with backing from the then Duke of Hamilton. With the onset of World War II, the airport developed rapidly in order to handle the large volume of American aircraft ferry traffic.
In 1938 passenger facilities were added, which were used continuously until the implentation of a massive investment programme to make Prestwick compatible with the new jet transports which were becoming available. A runway extension, parallel taxiway, link road, and an all-new terminal building were opened by the Queen Mother in 1964.
Scottish Aviation built a factory using the original terminal building and hangers at Prestwick, which produced such aircraft as the Jetstream and Bulldog. One part of the factory, the large white stone building which remains to this day, had in fact been the Palace of Engineering that had been part of the Empire Exhibition in Bellahouston Park in Glasgow in 1938. When Scottish Aviation went bankrupt and were merged with British Aerospace, BAe maintained aircraft production at the site until 1998. Today the factory produces components for Airbus aircraft, as well as Jetstream maintenance work.
In the beginning, Prestwick was the only Scottish airport allowed to operate a transatlantic link, largely due to the very benign weather conditions on the Ayrshire coast. Indeed, with a much lower incidence of fog than any other airport in Great Britain due to a geological anomaly, Prestwick is the only guaranteed fog free airport in the UK. This is perhaps one reason it managed to avoid total closure when it appeared that BAA seemed to be running down operations. It was also partly a political decision to silence those that questioned why Glasgow needed two airports when Glasgow Corporation had already invested money building Glasgow Airport.
Although British Airways had ceased regular passenger operations in the late 70's which some people saw as the beginning of the end for the airport, BA continued to intermittently use Prestwick as a site for pilot training, especially for training Concorde pilots. Concorde became a semi-regular visitor to the airport, and indeed BA and a number of other major airlines still use Prestwick for pilot training.
Prestwick Airport is also famous because it is the only piece of British territory that Elvis Presley set foot on, when his US Army transport plane stopped to refuel in 1960, whilst en route from Germany.
Change in the 1990s
In 1991 the newly-privatised British Airports Authority, BAA plc consolidated their portfolio of UK airports. Part of this was to move all transatlantic traffic departing from Scotland to Glasgow Airport, near Paisley, and sell Prestwick off to the private sector. In the early-to-mid 1990s passenger figures fell sharply with only freight traffic and a small number of charter flights using Prestwick on a regular basis. At this point the airport faced an uncertain future.
1994 marked the beginning of a renaissance for the struggling airport. It took the shrewd move and built its own railway station on the existing Glasgow-Ayr line, which ran straight past the airfield. Then, Irish budget line Ryanair opened a route to the airport from Dublin. This led to another route to London the following year. The resulting rapid growth of European no-frills airlines in the late 1990s has seen Prestwick grow even larger than it had ever been in traffic terms under state ownership. Ryanair now offers 19 different destinations from Prestwick - now one of their maintenance hubs - and other budget airlines have moved into the airport.
Today, as well as the thriving no-frills segment, Prestwick has continued its traditional strategic role as a refuelling point for military aircraft - the US Air Force and the RAF are frequent visitors for example. Cargo traffic has also become another stronghold of Prestwick with the vast majority of Scotland's Boeing 747 Freighter traffic entering via the airport.
The airport is privately owned by Infratil, a New Zealand investment company which also owns Wellington International Airport. In April of 2005, Infratil completed a major ?m refurbishment of the terminal building, and also controversially rebranded the airport using the phrase "Pure Dead Brilliant", taken straight from the Glasgow Patter.
On 6th July 2005, Prestwick Airport became the entry point into Scotland for the world's most powerful leaders on the eve of the G8 Summit which was being held in Gleneagles. Strathclyde Police implemented an unprecedented level of security around the airport for the duration of the summit. Officers from police forces throughout the UK were drafted in to assist in the operation, including armed officers. In preparation for the landing of Air Force One, carrying American president George W Bush, the A77, which runs past the end of the main runway, was controversially closed while the aircraft was on final approach.
Airlines and destinations
The main scheduled carrier at Prestwick is Ryanair, operating the vast majority of flights from the airport. The only other scheduled carriers are Aer Arann and Air Wales, on behalf of bmibaby.
- Aer Arann (Donegal)
- bmibaby (Air Wales) (Cardiff)
- Ryanair (Beauvais, Bournemouth, Charleroi, Dublin, Frankfurt Hahn, Girona, Gothenburg, Krakow, London Stansted, L黚eck, Milan Bergamo, Murcia, Oslo Torp, Pisa, Rome Ciampino, Shannon, Stockholm Skavsta, Weeze)
Charter & Holiday
Holiday airlines operating from Prestwick vary seasonally, but include My Travel, Britannia Airways, Balkan Holidays and LTE. Flights are normally operated to Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria and the US.
Cargo airlines serving Prestwick
Regular freight operators include Cargolux, Polar Air Cargo, Atlas Air, British Airways World Cargo, Air France Cargo, and Singapore Airlines Cargo - all operating Boeing 747-400F aircraft, with Polar Air having a maintenances hanger at the airport. Air Foyle HeavyLift and Volga-Dnepr are also occasional users of Prestwick with Antonov An-124 aircraft.
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Yi Chen
leo.c...@gmail.com
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