Glasgow Business . 27 www.glasgowchamberofcommerce.com


Glasgow Airport chief Amanda McMillan highlights the rapid growth of new European and international routes


HIGH-FLYING AIRPORT IS HELPING GLASGOW’S ECONOMY TAKE OFF


G


lasgow Airport enjoyed its busiest year in 2015 since 2008 and chalked up its fiſth consecutive


year of growth, Amanda McMillan, Managing Director of the airport, told a breakfast slot Glasgow Talks session at the State of the City Economy conference in November. Te airport chief highlighted her aim of boosting passenger numbers through the airport to more than


nine million this year. Amanda revealed that Glasgow had been selected as one of the Top 20 Holiday Destinations by National Geographic Traveller magazine. Glasgow Airport had played its


part in that, having grown the passenger base back to more than eight million, achieving that with 32 consecutive months of growth and 11 months of double digit growth. Over the past year, she said, the


airport had added 26 new routes including long-haul flights by WestJet to Halifax in Canada and Tomas Cook and Virgin to Las Vegas. New European routes include


those to Bordeaux, Carcassonne and Marseille in France and Milan in Italy, she said, while Eastern European routes now include Bucharest in Romania, Budapest in Hungary, Prague in the Czech Republic, Riga in Latvia and Vilnius in Lithuania. Te new domestic routes include those to Cardiff, Derry and Exeter. Tese new routes had helped to add one million passengers in the previous 12 months but with no loss of operating efficiency – Amanda said that 99.4 per cent of passengers had gone through airport security in under 10 minutes between January and October. Amanda said that the


transformation of the airport in 2014 to prepare it for the Commonwealth Games visitors had been followed by a programme of investment in 2015 that had seen £15 million spent on the upper deck of the airport and a further £15 million on the east pier. A further


£1.5 million had, as she jokingly put it, gone down the toilet. She said that an American woman


had once writen to her to say that Glasgow Airport had the nicest toilets she had ever seen. Highlighting one of the


challenges of the airport management role, she said that airlines never communicated to them who would be coming to the airport. “We have to work out visitor numbers from our own analytics,” she said. She said that Glasgow is quite a


seasonal city with a major difference in the range of flights to and from Glasgow from summer to winter. Te airport’s passenger profile


consisted of 50 per cent international and the same in domestic passengers, leisure 70 per cent and business 30 per cent, with inbound numbers amounting to 30 per cent and outbound 70 per cent. Amanda McMillan said that


partnership working was crucial, both with ‘Team Glasgow’, including Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, and ‘Team Scotland’ with the Scotish Government and VisitScotland. She highlighted the


importance of inward- bound visitors. “Scotland is famous for its scenery,” she said. “Tere are things here you can’t see anywhere else. If you fly to Glasgow, you can access them easily.” She said it was


vital that everyone plays their part to promote Glasgow as a place to live, work, visit and as a gateway to Scotland.


Amanda McMillan


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