Jill Stephenson and Andrew Hook
A few minutes ago, I walked down into the terminal building to buy a newspaper for the latest developments in the crisis. I am quite undiscriminating in this matter. I would have taken any crisis: the worst for the last 500 years or the worst for the last 50 minutes, it makes no difference. For the column writer, a crisis a day keeps the tedium away.
As I should have been able to predict, W H Smith was closed. It will re-open an hour or so before the flight to Poland departs at 5.55pm, the next and last of the day. It is barely three in the afternoon and the place is deserted. This isn’t a crisis, it’s just the way it is around here.
For a moment, I felt like escaping. Then I remembered that the only travel agency in the airport is closed too – permanently. I could have lingered for a coffee in Starbucks, which boasted one customer, but then it occurred to me that I am boycotting Starbucks for reasons I have forgotten. The nice little deli packed up some time ago.
Getting money out of the one cash machine is a hit or miss business, but today the hole in the wall is functioning so in a state of barely suppressed excitement I withdrew 20 quid before it did what our cash machine does best, which is to run out of readies. The escalator linking us with the railway station operates intermittently. This is one of its good days. On a bad day I walk the whole length of the airport concourse then back again in order to get to work in the morning. Don’t ask. It’s just the way it is around here.
I am talking with sad regret of my place of work, Prestwick International Airport. The office, where I write this stuff and wait for the next crisis, overlooks the spot where Mr O’Leary parks his aircraft and beyond that to the runway where I see them take off and beyond that to the rolling Ayrshire countryside. If I walk a few yards to the front of the building (they call it Liberator House after the plane of that name – Liberator, not House), I can breathe the intoxicating air of the Firth of Clyde and enjoy the sight of Arran. It’s a fine place to work, but I have to be frank – there is not a lot happening and there hasn’t been all winter. Mr O’Leary kindly sends half a dozen planes out and directs half a dozen back, and that’s the daily stretch of it.
Declared an international airport in 1946, Prestwick was quickly a source of political ill-will because of its chronic under-use. Tom Johnston, the post-war chairman of the Scottish Tourist Board, called it ‘a byword for misunderstanding between Scotland and England’, the Scots suspecting that the Westminster government was not serious about developing Prestwick.
Those who did use it loved it. The first passenger to step off an airliner from Venezuela into the terminal building, Henrique Masso, delivered this beautiful tribute:
In the airports of North America, there is efficiency and cleanliness, but no artistry. In London there is neither artistry nor cleanliness, but a certain amount of efficiency. Here there is not merely efficiency and cleanliness, but culture and beauty. We have seen nothing like it elsewhere.
Even now, in its reduced circumstances, one can see what Mr Masso was driving at: it is a marvellous space, one of the best in Scotland; it would be a wonderful setting for some grand theatrical event. Mr Salmond could do worse than make his declaration of independence from the gallery. But as a business Prestwick has been failing for years. The much-maligned RyanAir keeps it alive and has even increased its schedule of holiday flights for the 2013 summer season, but it will soon be the sole operator left. Wizz Air, the only other, pulls out next month.
We are looking forward to the summer season, which Mr O’Leary will launch with his customary optimism towards the end of March. Then happy people in ridiculous costumes will join us again, love will be all around us, and many £8 full Scottish breakfasts (including lager) will be consumed at 3.30 in the morning before the early one to Barcelona El Prat.
But we do not delude ourselves. We have a crisis of our own. The airport has been on the market for almost a year, now at the knockdown price of £14 million, and still its New Zealand owners (who bought it for £33 million in 2001) have no takers.
There are rumours within the precincts that, a few weeks ago, someone senior at St Andrew’s House came for talks with the management and emphasised the Scottish Government’s commitment to the long-term future of the airport. It seems that Alex Salmond is keen to reintroduce transatlantic flights, perhaps with a new Scottish-owned airline flying the flag. But I doubt that the visitor from Edinburgh got much change out of the management. They just want shot of us.
Prestwick has several overlooked advantages. It is the only airport in Scotland with its own dedicated railway station; on the recently improved ScotRail link, central Glasgow is but 40 minutes away. And, unlike Glasgow and Edinburgh, it is mostly fog-free – the only mist for miles around is the one that descends on this office when I have to write the Scottish Review editorial. Yet this potentially brilliant airport remains a wasting national asset.
The right Scottish consortium could transform Prestwick, converting the magnificent but exhausted terminal building into a hub of stylish shops and up-market restaurants, creating Britain’s only quality airport, a stimulus for the expansion of the core business.
Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review
