Five years of growth at Edinburgh Airport halted by Ryanair cuts
Passenger numbers have fallen at Scotland’s busiest airport for the first time in five years apart from snow disruption.
Edinburgh Airport blamed Ryanair axing its Stansted route for a 1 per cent reduction last month to 1,309,170 passengers compared to a year ago.
It contributed to a 6.1 per cent fall in passengers on UK routes to 458,686, which was only partially offset by a 2 per cent growth on international routes to 850,484.
Sustainable transport campaigners welcomed the fall in UK passengers and hoped more would switch to rail.
The airport said: “The fall in domestic passengers had a big influence on the overall numbers as Ryanair ended its Stansted route. The route was reduced to four weekly from four daily in June before ending completely last month.”
The only previous monthly reduction since 2014 was in March last year when the total fell by 0.1 per cent following the Beast from the East.
But the airport’s underlying growth continued, with passengers up 4.8 per cent to 14.8 million in the year to October.
The fall in UK passengers came despite expansion by Flybe and Easyjet.
Ten new Ryanair routes contributed to the international growth, but Norwegian scrapped the last of its three US routes and European links.
Chief executive Gordon Dewar said: “We’ve had almost 60 months of continuous growth and it’s unfortunate we’ve seen this temporary fall in passenger numbers – something we earlier this year predicted would happen.
“As an airport, we play our part in tourism, business, education, research and culture, so ensuring a sustainable future for the industry is very important.”
Aviation analyst John Strickland, of JLS Consulting, said: “Ryanair is always flexible in the way it allocates aircraft to airports and markets, but the lack of expected Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in their fleet is adding additional pressures to its route planning.
“Norwegian is facing the same problem, combined with its own financial challenges, and this has also resulted in Edinburgh losing additional capacity.”
Colin Howden, director of sustainable transport campaigners Transform Scotland, said: “The continued growth in aviation is perhaps the biggest threat to tackling the climate emergency.
“As such, it’s great news Edinburgh Airport’s growth has halted. We look forward to further falls in the airport’s passenger numbers as Angloscottish journeys increasingly transfer from air to rail.”