Scottish Airports gear up for a busy summer

The Scotsman

Scottish Airports gear up for a busy summer  Airport bosses make plea to holidaymakers to be prepared when arriving at airports.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:06 I'm Alastair Dalton, the Scotsman's Transport Correspondent,

00:21 at one of Scotland's busiest airports, Glasgow,

00:24 which is gearing up for its busiest time of the year.

00:27 Glasgow expects to carry about 8.5 million passengers this year.

00:33 I'm Mark Beveridge, I'm the Managing Director here at Glasgow Airport.

00:40 I always ask our passengers to turn up promptly,

00:43 so there's an element for an international flight,

00:45 making sure that they're here around about three hours before,

00:48 and for a domestic flight about two hours before,

00:50 but always asking them to check with their airline for advice on when they're departing,

00:54 to make sure their check-in times are correct.

00:56 We also ask them to focus on their documentation,

00:58 making sure their passports are in date and have the right validity for the country that they're travelling to,

01:03 and should they print boarding cards, should they be checking,

01:06 making sure they have all that documentation to hand.

01:08 Then when it comes to our security,

01:10 we also ask them to remember that the 100ml liquid rule is still in place,

01:14 and that still sits within the small plastic bags that the airport will provide,

01:18 and asking them just to be prepared,

01:19 take out their electronic equipment and put it in the trays,

01:22 and present themselves to security as clean as possible.

01:24 That makes it the cleanest journey they can for the passenger,

01:27 makes the experience the best it can be.

01:29 We are offering the Twilight service here as well.

01:31 We have it for our customers such as 2E, Jet 2 and EasyJet running at this moment in time,

01:36 and what we're asking passengers that are travelling,

01:38 that are staying in hotels local at the airport,

01:40 and also round about in the vicinity of the airport,

01:43 that they could come and drop their bags off the night before.

01:46 And part of that service we're offering free parking for an hour for the customer to do that,

01:50 and also part of that we've offered a section where they can apply for a 50% discount on priority security as well,

01:57 so they can do that as well.

01:58 It's all about enhancing the experience in the morning when they come in.

02:01 It takes away the peaks that we see going through security,

02:04 and enhances the journey.

02:05 And right now we're seeing the uptick, and it is growing year on year.

02:09 Obviously Spain and all these destinations are very popular,

02:11 the Canaries are very popular as well.

02:13 And we're also seeing some routes like Florida and Mexico,

02:17 and these are taking some upward travel at this moment in time,

02:20 so it's nice to see those routes flourish.

02:23 Right now we're around about 90% recovered where we are on our 2019 footfall,

02:27 which takes us just around about, we'll see just over 8 million passengers this year pass through our doors at the airport.

02:32 And obviously we come up to the busy summer period where we see,

02:35 you know, between the school holidays, that normally accounts between Easter and October,

02:40 and the summer breaks, around about 50% of our passenger volumes.

02:43 So summer's a very important time to us, and we like people to come to the airport prepared,

02:47 and enjoy their time in the airport while they're doing that.

02:50 Around about 8th to 10th of July will be our peak periods,

02:52 where on average we'll see something like 25,000 to 30,000 customers come through our doors in a day,

02:57 and that translates to around about 250 aircraft movements in that day.

03:01 EasyJet has introduced a sixth base aircraft to Glasgow this year.

03:05 We've also seen TUI consolidate their operation in Scotland to Glasgow,

03:10 so we now have four base aircraft here, and we also have a 787 also flying the Florida and Mexico routes through the summer as well.

03:17 We're also looking at the fact that Jet2's added an eighth base aircraft as well,

03:21 so that's additional capacity in the fleet.

03:23 And then also KLM and BA, some of the hub carriers are also adding different routes through the summer.

03:28 And as we go forward, I mean, looking at route development's a priority for us,

03:33 and we look forward to welcoming additional Turkey routes next year, which we've announced already.

03:38 But it's looking like it's shaping up.

03:41 The industry's still going through growing pains, as I would say,

03:44 and it's still hard for them to have the right aircraft availability, and also crew as well.

03:49 So as that's coming forward, they've been quite strategic about where they're placing their aircraft at this moment in time.

03:54 And obviously part of what we've done at the airport as well, with the likes of EasyJet,

03:58 is we've introduced the self-service kiosks, and that's promoting check-in being far easier for the customer to do.

04:03 It is slightly quicker, or slightly slower if the customer wants to go at that speed.

04:07 It means that they can suit themselves and check in as we go, and that's something we're seeing a great benefit for.

04:12 It's allowing passengers to present themselves at security, and obviously take some of the peaks out of the traditional timings.

04:18 We have obviously taxis at the airport, we have buses,

04:21 and we're also encouraging our passengers to look at it from a sustainability point of view as well.

04:25 We've introduced a mid-stay car park, which gives us another 700 spaces,

04:29 and is a product that's sort of designed for a four- to nine-day traveller.

04:34 And by putting that in at the airport, we hope to smooth out some of that capacity issue that we saw last year.

04:39 The other product that we've introduced as well is valley parking, and that's been really well received as well.

04:44 We're allowing customers to come in and drop their car, and obviously we block park at our long car park site,

04:49 and that works quite well from a convenience factor for customers.

04:53 [no audio]

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