MSP & MD Back Third Runway

Wendy Alexander and Amanda McMillan have both backed a third runway for Heathrow.

The two, Paisley North MSP and Glasgow Airport Managing Director respectively, were members of the panel at an event to discuss Heathrow and in particular, the proposal for a third runway there.

Other panel members included Steve Ridgeway, Chief Executive of Virgin Atlantic, and John McGlynn, the Renfrewshire-based Managing Director of the Airlink Group.

Wendy Alexander said: “This is such an important issue for the West of Scotland and we need to recognise the significance of the decisions that will be made over the coming weeks and months. Ten years ago we made decisions such as the M74 extension, Route Development Fund and GARL – the type of decisions that take a decade to come to fruition. We are on the verge of doing the same for the third runway.

“It’s the nature of politics that both the Lib Dems and Tories are against the third runway but I suspect that is merely a position of opposition. I hope that if these parties were to find themselves in Government then they would change their position. Let me give you two statistics – there are currently 105 weekday daytime flights from Scotland to London and 45 of these are to Heathrow. That shows how significant Heathrow is.

“If you go back 15 years there were 21 regional UK destinations you could fly to from Heathrow. Now there are only six and however good you think high speed rail is, it is only going to reach Birmingham from London more than 15 years from now. We need to ensure that the number of weekly flights and regional destinations served form Heathrow do not shrink further.

“Scottish businesses need direct flights and connectivity to get us out of this recession as quickly as possible. However we are not going to have a large number of direct scheduled flights from Glasgow to the emerging economies of Russia, Brazil, India and China therefore the only way to reach these destinations will be by routing through Heathrow or other hubs.

“The Scottish tourism industry also relies heavily on Heathrow and the fact that the number of visitors to Scotland has grown by three quarters in the last nine years. That’s a big rise and the tourism industry depends on peoples’ ability to get here – 87% of these visitors arrived by air.

“There’s a battle to be won, both for Heathrow and for Glasgow. If Labour win then we will drive this project forward and if not, we would have to convince a new government to change their view. I think we can accommodate environmental issues while also realising that we have one of the world’s global cities on our doorstep, and global cities need a global hub.”

Amanda McMillan commented: “I believe that expansion of Heathrow is the right thing and that belief is not politicised within BAA. There is no internal pressure within BAA that says I have to promote Heathrow. While I do believe Heathrow is important, if it cannot provide the connectivity we need I will look elsewhere.

“We already have Amsterdam and Dubai as hubs that are accessible from Glasgow and we are keen to look at other hubs like Paris and Frankfurt. It is unlikely there will be demand for a huge number of direct routes from Glasgow in the near future so we need to have good hub connectivity. Every day our passengers feel the effect of Heathrow being close to capacity. This winter saw a prolonged cold snap and services were disrupted due to problems at Heathrow.

“We also lost the red-eye flight from Glasgow to Heathrow which was always full. That was due to capacity issues and British Airways had a difficult decision to make there. I believe passionately that if I am to provide a quality service for my passengers at Glasgow, then they need good connectivity to Heathrow.”