Quintin Jardine's blog

Today, the following is running on the Ryanair website, and is being reported in other media. I will add to its dissemination.

This is the latest round in Ryanair’s bid to screw the maximum commercial advantage from  the forced sale of Edinburgh, and it must be resisted. The company is demanding, as it does all over Europe, preferential treatment over its competitors, and it has no shame in so doing. But this time it is over the top. The figures it quotes are clearly nonsense.They suggest that the obscure loss-making winter routes that they are cutting represent over a quarter of Edinburgh Airport’s total turnover. They imply that it takes one employee to service one thousand ‘pax’. From the first five words right to the end, the statement is riddled with arrogance and distortion. Michael O’Leary and his cohorts have to realise that theirs is a service organisation that relies on public goodwill. If they did so, instead of constantly taking the aggressive posture of the bully, they might find that their airline’s ‘pax p a’ figures actually rose. If they don’t they will find more and more people deciding that civility and service is worth a little extra cost.

Edinburgh Airport was there, and profitable, before Ryanair came along, and it will continue to thrive even if it pulls out entirely.  In fact, I wish it would, and look seriously at an alternative.

In the middle of East Lothian, there sits, right beside the Edinburgh – London railway line, East Fortune Airport, home of the Museum of Flight and its major attraction, Concorde. It has been there for almost a hundred years since it was built to counter the threat of the Zeppelin. In 1919, it became the world’s first trans-Atlantic airport, when the airship R34 took off from there and flew to Mineola, New York. Today it is used by no-one other than a few microlight pilots, motor-cyclists  and Sunday market traders, but for a short period fifty years ago it served as Edinburgh’s airport while work was under way at Turnhouse. It would probably be cheap to buy, the runway could be easily restored and a dedicated railway station could be installed at minimal cost, allowing a direct link to the centre of Edinburgh that would be as quick as the Turnhouse bus. The residents of East Linton and Athelstaneford might have reservations, but these would be  softened by the prospect of improved rail services and rising property values.

Take a look, Mr O’Leary. Yes, I appreciate that it would take a little investment and that spending its own money is not  something that your company is fond of doing. However I suspect that East Lothian Council would bite your hand off for the economic growth you would generate, and that Scotrail would too, for all those extra pax. Freed from landing charges, you could operate as many profitable routes as you liked out of there. On top of all that, there woud be an added, undreamed of bonus. You might actually become popular.