There has been a number of stories about route development support provided to airlines launching new services to Scotland, specifically about how the process might be bias towards Edinburgh Airport.
Glasgow Chamber of Commerce believes that the current system has essentially distorted the market, as every long haul flight from Scotland since 2019 has operated from Edinburgh Airport (and even then, the 2019 announcement for Glasgow Airport was just TUI moving airports in Orlando)
Making claims of bias and unfair support to a single airport is a great way to reach the headlines, but is essentially meaningless without knowing the passenger numbers and how they have change pre/post covid.
With this in mind I started researching and have compiled a comparison for 10 key markets identified by Visit Scotland for inbound tourism to Scotland.
What Has Been Researched?
For each market I have compared the routes that operated in 2017 and the routes that operated in 2023 from multiple Scottish Airports. The airports researched are;
- Aberdeen International (ABZ)
- Edinburgh Airport (EDI)
- Glasgow Airport (GLA)
- Prestwick Airport (PIK)
2017 was selected at random, it offers a year that is far enough away from the start of the pandemic to offer a good set of data, and featured a good number of new and ending routes across Scotland.
2023 was selected as it offers a full year of data with minimal impact from the pandemic, as 2022 was restrained by restrictions in Q1 of the year.
Where possible I have included the airlines and frequencies of routes that operated.
Data for passenger numbers was collated from the UK Civil Aviation Administration.
The countries researched as part of this were as follows;
All information was as accurate as I can make it, and I have tried to provide brief summaries in each presentation. This research as been done in such a way as to eliminate any bias towards airports or organisations, and I have not made any claims to either prove or disprove the claims made by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.
This data is intended to provide a snapshot of pre and post covid performance of key international markets from each airport.
Please see below for each countries respective presentation.
Canada
China
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Spain
There are three presentations for Spain. One covers the mainland, one the Balearic Islands and one for the Canary Islands.
George Nugent Travels 
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