Wings over Scotland: The steady growth of Glasgow Airport since the mid-sixties – HeraldScotland

IF any of the exceedingly hard-pressed staff at Glasgow Airport had time to read the Glasgow Herald on the morning of the airports opening, they would have been cheered.

The papers leading article on Monday, May 2, 1966, argued that the decision to build the airport was the right one. It could even be, in its way, as crucial a decision as many that had found a permanent place in civic history from the dredging of the Clyde to the introduction (and eventually abolition) of the trams, the leader continued.

It demonstrated there there was still a place for the kind of civic enterprise which made made Glasgow renowned in the previous century as one of Europes most progressive cities.

Secondly, it demonstrated the growing dependence of Glasgow, and of Scotland, on air communications. The more air services we have, and the more competitive these services are with each other and with British Railways, the less we are likely to feel like a remote province of Europe, or to be treated as one. It was a fair point.

Upbeat projections were already being made for the airport, which at that time was owned by Glasgow Corporation. In its first year, it was expected to handle 1.2 million passengers and, if that trend continued, some two million by 1970.

Revenues were forecast to rise from 600,000 in 1966/67 to 750,000 in 1970. Landing fees paid by airlines were expected to show a healthy increase. There were great expectations about the airports freight-handling capacity, especially if Britain joined the Common Market. And there was talk of building a 100-bedroom hotel at the airport.

Royal opening

IN fact, when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrived on June 27 for the royal opening of the airport, its director Ronald Read hinted to the duke that expansion might be on the horizon. Already?, the Duke replied, with a laugh.

By that time, 120,000 passengers had arrived at the airport in order to catch a flight. Some 40,000 people had each paid a shilling to get into the sightseers enclosure, and at least another 150,000 had looked around the building. The car-park is three-quarters full most of the time, and the restaurants are packed at both lunchtime and in the evening, the Evening Times reported. Mr Read said that cargo had gone mad, with between 1,200 and 1,500 tons having been carried in the first four weeks.

At that time, 11 regular airlines and six charter services operated from the airport. There were 13 return flights to London every weekday. The airport had been designed to handle medium and short-haul traffic, and there was talk of direct continental flights.

It was also hoped that transatlantic flights could land at Glasgow in the future: the main runway, all 6,720ft of it, could be extended to 10,000ft in order to accommodate those planes.

Transatlantic flights began in June 1967, by which time the airport was already handling 654 different aircraft types, 1.5 million passengers, and in excess of 34,000 aircraft movements.

In September 1972, the airport welcomed the first visit of a wide-bodied jet, a Lockheed Tri-Star, followed the next month by a Laker DC-10.

BAA buyout

A KEY moment in the airports history arrived on Monday, January 7, 1975, when the British Airports Authority (BAA) signed a deal, effective from April 1, to take over ownership of the facility from Glasgow Corporation. Under the deal, BAA paid off a capital debt of more than 6.5 million and undertook to carry out a 10m development programme over the next decade.

The deal also included a 1m goodwill payment to the corporation with reports saying this sum could go towards a new cultural complex for the city, at the junction of Buchanan Street and Sauchiehall Street.

BAA chief executive officer Norman Payne said plans were in hand to extend the domestic arrivals area, with other improvements to follow as demand arose. A new Glasgow-London shuttle service was launched the weekend after the deal was signed.

Other landmarks in the history have included the start, in June 1976, of a 2m extension of the passenger terminal; a visit by Concorde in October 1981; the visit, in June 1983, of a Nasa Boeing 747 with the Space Shuttle Enterprise on top of it; and, in March 1989, the launch of the biggest development of the airport yet a three-year, 55m expansion of the terminal.

In July 2006, BAA was taken over for 10.1 billion by a consortium led by Ferrovial. Later, it became known as Heathrow Airport Holdings.

New heights

THE airport enjoyed steady growth for several years, culminating in a record year in 2017 of 9.9 million passengers a 5.8% per cent increase on the previous year. Before the advent of the Covid-induced shutdown, the airport was handing around nine million passengers, the main reasons for the drop being Ryanairs decision to close its base in 2018, and the collapses of Thomas Cook and then Flybe.

A spokesman said the airport had remained open during the pandemic to support critical functions, ranging from the air ambulance service that is based there, to military, freight and PPE delivery flights. Other functions include Highlands and Islands routes and critical domestic flights for key workers, and repatriating passengers.

During the pandemic, he added, the airport has gone from hundreds of flights per day to a handful, though the picture is slightly more optimistic now that UK travel restrictions have lifted, which has resulted in an increase in domestic flights.

The economic turbulence of the last year, however, has meant that one-third of the 6,000 jobs at the 100-plus companies that work across the airport have been lost.

In addition to international international commercial air transport and general aviation, the airport has catered for two flying clubs and the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde Air Squadron, the latter still there.

The airport is today owned by AGS Airports Ltd, which is jointly held by Ferrovial and AGS Ventures Airports.

The anonymous author of that enthusiastic Herald article of 55 years ago would have been encouraged by what the airport has achieved in the decades since.

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Wings over Scotland: The steady growth of Glasgow Airport since the mid-sixties - HeraldScotland