Taxpayers pick up £50,000 bill for US military at Prestwick
Taxpayers have paid at least £53,000 to cover fees for US military aircraft landing at Prestwick Airport since Donald Trump became president.
The struggling Scottish Government-owned airport has invoiced for scores of US armed forces flights since 2017. They are sent to the US embassy, but are being paid by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) in what has been described as a “sweetheart deal”.
The majority of the payments for landing, navigation, and parking fees were made last July, the month in which Mr Trump and his entourage touched down at Prestwick ahead of a two-day stay at his nearby Turnberry resort.
The invoices indicate at least 35 US military flights landed at Prestwick that month, with taxpayers picking up fees worth a total of £40,166.
While the MOD says it had paid £53,000 to cover the fees between 2017 and 2019, it i s understood the total cost to the public purse is even higher.
The invoices contain no details of flights prior to last July, or between August 2018 and this February.
In total, they reference just 73 flights, a conservative number when compared alongside the 1,093 aviation turbine fuel orders placed with Prestwick by the US Defence Logistics Agency since October 2017. Those orders are worth £15.6 million to the beleaguered airport.
The MOD said it had not yet received, or processed, all the invoices dating back to the start of Mr Trump’s time in office. It added that there was a “limited level of documentation” with regards to the fees, which it said was “very much due to the arrangement being ‘business as usual’.”
The reciprocal deal, which sees US authorities pick up the tab for UK military aircraft using US civilian airports, dates back to 1967.
It is unclear which country benefits the most. The MOD has refused to release details of specific flights, claiming that to do so would, or would be likely to prejudice relations between the UK and US, and allow terrorists to identify patterns of air traffic movement.
In October, The Scotsman reported allegations that Prestwick was waiving socalled service fees for US military aircraft. Airport management have repeatedly declined to comment, or release information it holds, claiming that Prestwick’s commercial interests are not outweighed by the public interest in disclosing it.
Ross Greer,msp, the Scottish Greens’ external affairs spokesman, said: “It’s disgraceful enough that a publicly-owned airport is effectively subsidising Donald Trump’s military activities but now it turns out that the MOD is using taxpayer cash to subsidise them even further.”
“We now know that both the Scottish Government, who own the airport, and the UK government, through the MOD, are enabling the military misadventures of an increasingly unstable and dangerous government.
“It sounds like the real figure for MOD payments of US fees is far higher but they’ve not bothered keeping track because this sweetheart deal has been in operation for so long.”