Scotland
in the
heat
Callum, born 100 years ago this week, stood for no half-measures
Tessa Ransford’s anniversary tribute
to her husband
In good times we
want the arts
In bad times we
need the arts
Richard Wilson, a delegate at the Young Scotland Programme, writes for SR
Click here
Get SR free in
your inbox three
times a week
Click here
Lockerbie
An overview by Morag Kerr of the Justice for Megrahi Committee
Click here
The Cafe
The Cafe is our readers’ forum. Send your contribution to islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
East End of Glasgow
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
A wee donation to
charity doesn’t justify
the drop-off charge
I read with interest Quintin Jardine’s proposal (25 April) for a way out of the increasingly problematic relationship that Ryanair ‘enjoys’ with air travellers across the world (not just, of course, in Scotland or Edinburgh specifically). However, I remain rather cynical as to the prospects of this working itself out in favour of the consumer, mainly because Edinburgh Airport itself has actually become very comfortable with the Ryanair way of doing things. I should explain what I mean by this.
A visit to Edinburgh Airport has long been a relatively pleasant experience, but particularly so since the recent revamp was completed in 2010. The increased capacity at security check areas means that travellers are only forced to wait for a few minutes to pass through the scanners (tip – if you are travelling in the morning, try to head left from the boarding card check, as many business travellers are able to skip the queues with their priority desk, located on the opposite site).
You now enter the departures area to find a huge selection of eating and shopping options. The duty free area faces you along with an information board detailing when you can expect to obtain information about your flight. The ubiquitous Wetherspoons pub is along to the right, located next to gates 12 and 12B (surely even the most superstitious among us realise that simply not calling it gate 13 doesn’t change the fact that it is still the 13th gate?), where one boards flights to Northern Ireland.
This rather bizarre convention, of continuing to send all Belfast passengers past an unmanned police desk, was the topic of scorn from former first minister Ian Paisley in 2004. Those of us who do regularly make the trip will know, however, that it is only really inconvenient on those occasions when your plane parks elsewhere and you are forced to take a short bus journey to walk past said unmanned police desk.
Aside from the lack of free internet, there is little to complain about when it comes to the service Edinburgh Airport, and its current owners, the British Airport Authority, provide passengers once in the terminal. Indeed, one would hope that the new owners of Edinburgh Airport, after the Competition Commission decision to force BAA to sell, would seek to maintain the status quo on the vast majority of internal procedures.
Outside, however, things are much less user-friendly. I am referring to the continued presence of the £1 drop-off area. A free drop-off area remains, less-than-conveniently located in the long-stay car park. The reason the long-stay car park is an option for those requiring to park their cars for a period of days, rather than minutes or hours, is that it is relatively cheap. The reason it is relatively cheap is because it is far away from the terminal.
Of course, as the airport itself would emphasise if challenged, 15p in every pound is donated to local charities. Indeed, it was reported that £100,000 had been raised by the drop-off charge over the first 18 months of its existence. This suggests that something in the region of 700,000 cars have used the area in this period.
One could argue that this money could not have gone to the conservation and education projects that it did were it not for the drop-off area charge. The chances are that many of those people who have paid the charge would not otherwise have given their pound to any charity. Of course, this rather ignores the fact that 85p does not go to charity. Once the Forth Road Bridge had been paid for by tolls, tolls were abolished. There was no cause to introduce the £1 drop-off area in the first place. More effective policing of the previous area would have eliminated those people who tended to simply park-up and wait for their passengers instead of using the nearby park and ride as what Americans would call a ‘cell phone lot’.
Ryanair have helped to make air travel affordable for everyone, meaning almost a generation of travellers now have the opportunity to travel to destinations at a relatively low cost.
No American airport that I have ever visited charges people to drop passengers off at the terminal. The very concept is baffling to outsiders, but all too familiar to people who use airports like Edinburgh or Belfast International (an airport where the £1 charge seems even more cynical given the distance of the airport from Belfast itself and the lack of transport options to get there).
My main objection to the £1 drop-off area has always been that it is tacky and cynical. Two words that can very often be applied to one of Edinburgh Airports most popular airlines, Ryanair.
The recent decision by Ryanair to cut more flights from the capital to European destinations was met with some disappointment, not least by BAA. However, in my view at least, the further the airport distances itself from the attention-seeking budget airline, the better. I should qualify that statement by adding that I do actually believe that Ryanair serves a very valid purpose for tourism, even if many of its flights land at airports which are actually some distance from their purported destination: Glasgow Prestwick being one notable example (or, indeed, ‘Edinburgh East Fortune’?).
Ryanair have helped to make air travel affordable for everyone, meaning almost a generation of travellers now have the opportunity to travel to destinations at a relatively low cost. Environmentalists will of course point out the important issue of Ryanair’s ‘carbon footprint’ as a significant negative.
The cost is ‘relatively’ low, of course, if you don’t make any mistakes when it comes to the actual act of travel. Just as the £1 drop-off area become £5 if you accidentally stray over 10 minutes worth of waiting, so too does Ryanair capitalise on the mistakes of its passengers. Forget to check-in online, forget to book your bags in advance, forget to bring hand luggage that is small enough to fit in the cages at the gate and you are facing a significant charge.
There are also problems of consistency: a recent flight from Barcelona to Dublin saw a passenger charged €50 for a bag which he claimed to have successfully brought on the outward leg of his return trip without charge. On the same flight, one couple were able to make their second carry-on bag fit in the cage by removing items from it to their first case; an act which surely would have made the first case too large to fit, but one that was apparently missed by the gate staff.
It is these ‘catch you out’ tactics that typify, for critics, budget air travel. Our national airport in our nation’s capital should be better than this.
Andrew Sanders
Book a table in The Cafe. Email islay@scottishreview.net
