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It's probably one of those where the headline doesn't reveal the whole story. The majority of passengers surely travelled before the end of March when things really started to hit - there was getting on for a million passengers last January alone.
Figures to March:

Jan: 934,654
Feb: 934,960
Mar: 498,300

Total: 2,367,914

Source: Airport data 2020 01 | UK Civil Aviation Authority
 
The new access road is a welcome, and long overdue, addition. Good to see some foresight on a direct connection to the M8, as well.

I just can't see how a second runway could ever be justified without a completely new terminal. No matter how many extensions they add on, the current rabbit-warren layout is unfixable. It should be a national infrastructure priority to get a new terminal built, bringing it up to scratch with those in the London area or other cities of similar size.

Aviation and world travel will return and will continue to grow past 2019 levels... Edinburgh will still have a barnyard as a customs hall in 2050.
 
The new access road is a welcome, and long overdue, addition. Good to see some foresight on a direct connection to the M8, as well.

I just can't see how a second runway could ever be justified without a completely new terminal. No matter how many extensions they add on, the current rabbit-warren layout is unfixable. It should be a national infrastructure priority to get a new terminal built, bringing it up to scratch with those in the London area or other cities of similar size.

Aviation and world travel will return and will continue to grow past 2019 levels... Edinburgh will still have a barnyard as a customs hall in 2050.
Gatwick handled 46.5 million passengers with a single runway last year vs just under 15 million at Edinburgh. (albeit it being around 800m longer than EDI and handling larger aircraft). Edinburgh can handle aircraft like the A350, 787 and 777 at the moment, so there's no great need for another runway in the next 10 years.

Regarding the terminal, I agree it isn't fit for purpose for handling the amount of pre-covid traffic. However it is privately owned, so there is very little Government can do about it other than spending a lot of tax payers money to renationalise it and rebuild it. The only realistic hope is if GIP sell it on to another company who have the ambition to rebuild/build a new terminal as a long-term asset.

Sadly most large British airports are majority owned by companies who seem to want to extract as much money as possible from them with as little investment required.
 
Gatwick is, or at least was, the busiest airport in the world utilising a single runway. They do have a second runway available for use if the primary runway is out of service for works or other reasons, but they are far too closely spaced together to be in use simultaneously, or in any other operating mode. In short, Gatwick badly needs another runway.

Returning to Edinburgh, a second runway is clearly not needed at the moment and won’t be beneficial until the airport is handling over 30 million passengers. The big problem for operators there is the taxiway layout and incumbent restrictions, and the apron layout and restrictions.

The terminal layout is a disaster and is hamstringing the efficient functioning of the operational portion of the airport.
These additions and alterations they insist on doing really are polishing the proverbial. All that is happening is the problem is being pushed down the line and it is getting larger and larger while it does so.

Glasgow airport has some similar issues but in the whole is better laid out.

Scotland could really benefit from a new airport. Anyone who has had the opportunity to travel extensively will attest to the fact that British airports (aside from LHR T5) are amongst the worst in the developed world. Cheap shopping malls, with a horrible passenger experience and even worse operator experience.

The Germans, although clearly with problems, have had the foresight to develop a new airport for Berlin. Munich airport is excellent. Frankfurt has legacy issues but is running with 4 runways.

When will the U.K. actually spend money on infrastructure? Never? Is it all to be left to the private companies that just want to take cash and return to shareholders? National infrastructure should have at least a percentage of government ownership and control.

A bit of Victorian vision and “can-do” wouldn’t go amiss.
 
Gatwick is, or at least was, the busiest airport in the world utilising a single runway. They do have a second runway available for use if the primary runway is out of service for works or other reasons, but they are far too closely spaced together to be in use simultaneously, or in any other operating mode. In short, Gatwick badly needs another runway.

Returning to Edinburgh, a second runway is clearly not needed at the moment and won’t be beneficial until the airport is handling over 30 million passengers. The big problem for operators there is the taxiway layout and incumbent restrictions, and the apron layout and restrictions.

The terminal layout is a disaster and is hamstringing the efficient functioning of the operational portion of the airport.
These additions and alterations they insist on doing really are polishing the proverbial. All that is happening is the problem is being pushed down the line and it is getting larger and larger while it does so.

Glasgow airport has some similar issues but in the whole is better laid out.

Scotland could really benefit from a new airport. Anyone who has had the opportunity to travel extensively will attest to the fact that British airports (aside from LHR T5) are amongst the worst in the developed world. Cheap shopping malls, with a horrible passenger experience and even worse operator experience.

The Germans, although clearly with problems, have had the foresight to develop a new airport for Berlin. Munich airport is excellent. Frankfurt has legacy issues but is running with 4 runways.

When will the U.K. actually spend money on infrastructure? Never? Is it all to be left to the private companies that just want to take cash and return to shareholders? National infrastructure should have at least a percentage of government ownership and control.

A bit of Victorian vision and “can-do” wouldn’t go amiss.
Agree with pretty much everything you've written there, except maybe about Berlin airport. It was 9 years late in opening, budget overruns, corruption allegations etc. however it is a much better experience than Tegel and Schönefeld from what I've read so far (albeit in the current Covid environment)

I'm not sure if Government owned airports are much better in delivering in the UK, Manchester Airport for example is technically majority owned by the local authorities of Greater Manchester, yet is it that much better experience than Gatwick or Heathrow (excluding T5)?
 
The terminal layout is a disaster and is hamstringing the efficient functioning of the operational portion of the airport.................

..............A bit of Victorian vision and “can-do” wouldn’t go amiss.
Victorian vision and can-do was almost entirely private sector funded and driven btw! Much more so than today.

That aside, I agree entirely that the terminal is annoyingly devoid of a sense of grand and simple coherence, esp landside - and entirely lacking in any external aesthetics. Believe me, I'd love some 'grand projet' statement thing.

But I don't totally agree with the functional crit. You can have exactly the same transit times and amenities from entrance to take off in a dull, confusing at times shed as you get in a Starchitect designed statement.

My hopes are for an achievable compromise - a general terminal expansion that brings in more light and views and space - and builds on what is by and large quite a simple and coherent layout once you're airside. A busy central mall and quieter wings to east and west.
 
Edinburgh Airport promoting development of a new cargo & distribution hub on part of the decommissioned land.





From EDI's submission in support of the Elements Edinburgh planning application:

A new cargo and distribution hub entitled Global Air Park (GAP) is earmarked for brownfield land which was formerly part of the original RAF Turnhouse and recently decommissioned crosswind runway. There is significant demand for distribution facilities in Edinburgh with brownfield land being optimal for this purpose. An area totalling 7.1ha is allocated for a mixture of hangar/warehousing, office space and service yards.
 
Edinburgh Airport promoting development of a new cargo & distribution hub on part of the decommissioned land.
It's good to see space being planned for ancilliary services. I think there's a lot of scope for growth in air cargo and other air related services at Edinburgh. I wish the whole development of the airport could have been the other way around, though. A terminal next to the rail line (with airport station) and a quicker tram ride into town would have been much better.
 
It's good to see space being planned for ancilliary services. I think there's a lot of scope for growth in air cargo and other air related services at Edinburgh. I wish the whole development of the airport could have been the other way around, though. A terminal next to the rail line (with airport station) and a quicker tram ride into town would have been much better.
The original terminal building was on Turnhouse Road where the cargo terminal is today, until it was replaced with the current terminal in the 1970s. There was a Turnhouse Station on the line out to Fife, but it closed to passengers back in the 1930s.

To think what might have been if they'd kept the passenger terminal where it was!

1355607
 
BA Cityflyer is adding Faro as another seasonal destination.


BA’s CityFlyer operation will launch the service on Saturdays and Sundays until June 20, Edinburgh Airport confirmed to The Scotsman.
It is expected to operate using 98-seat Embraer 190 aircraft.
 
BA Cityflyer announce another summer seasonal flight from Edinburgh. This time to Guernsey from 25 June.


British Airways is launching two additional routes this summer. Customers will benefit from London City Airport to Guernsey and Guernsey to Edinburgh, operating twice a week from 25 June 2021.


GCI/EDI

BA2342

Monday 13.15 – 14.50

Friday 10.15 – 11.50

Two per week (Mon & Fri)

EDI/GCI

BA2343

Monday 15.40 – 17.15

Friday 12.40 – 14.15

Two per week (Mon & Fri)
 
insider.co.uk published an interview with Edinburgh Airport CEO Gordon Dewar a few days ago. It's mainly about how the pandemic and lockdown has effected the airport and covers a variety of topics. However there were a few questions regarding future developments at the airport which I've quoted below:


Insider:How is Edinburgh Airport investing for the future?

Dewar: We were planning on spending about £70m a year during 2021/22. We spent around £20m last year just finishing off all the projects that were in flight and we'll spend about £10m this year and I suspect we'll spend another £10m again next year.

We will clearly not be at capacity for a while. We have an airport that's capable of dealing with about 80 million passengers and at the moment we've got less than four million. Even in 2019 we only had 15 million. So we've always had a capacity issue that would be maybe half of the overall investment in the year for new capacity.

We're looking at a solar farm, because we want to be a lot more sustainable around our energy provision. So we're not we're not sitting around doing nothing. But clearly, we've got to justify the spend based on giving us a real meaningful return, despite having much lower passenger numbers.

Insider:Are there any plans to expand the flight routes or update the airspace?

Dewar: We've been looking at updating airspace for a number of years now, which is obviously quite a contentious issue for many.

What we can't avoid is modernisation. The existing airspace uses old technology of beacons, which will be phased out in the coming years, and we'll have to go on to the equivalent of sat nav for planes.

Even if the routes looked almost identical, we'd have to change them under legislation so that we can use new modern aviation technology.

We’ll be looking to improve a number of things, making sure that we're flying in places that minimises noise and reducing fuel burn for environmental reasons.

Insider:Is the airport still considering adding a new runway?

Dewar: We've got a projection for a second runway on the north side, which has been in the planning process for decades.

Even before Covid, we thought we wouldn’t need it probably until the 2040s. But there's clearly an awful lot more we can do on that single runway before we run out of capacity.

By 2040 there will be electric and hydrogen planes flying about. You might need to do different designs of airports to accommodate different technologies. Maybe they'll be slower to get off the ground or they'll be bigger; I don't know.

Insider:What sort of other new technologies are you investing in?

Dewar: I think the whole customer experience is clearly accelerating to digital, even more so now people want less physical contact.

We can foresee an entirely digital journey where you never need to get your document from your pocket and any paper out. It will come in different stages and depends on what individual airlines want to do with their technology and so on.
 
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