Edinburgh Airport announces £500million investment plan

AlastairFraser said:

It doesn't drive demand, but being the only GB preclearance facility would incentivise a massive uplift in departures, which in turn would require more runway capacity.

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Runway capacity isn't really that big a problem. Stansted think they can reach 51 million with a single runway, and Edinburgh could extend the runway if needs be.

The problem is the lack of terminal capacity. Any preclearance facility can only be used for US flights, and it's not an ideal use of airport space. It doesn't matter so much in Dublin because they've got plenty of underused gates, but this isn't the case in Edinburgh.

David M said:

If pre-clearance from Scotland became reality then the airport that should be used is Prestwick - it was specifically built for transatlantic flights as it basically never gets shut down by bad weather.

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It would be faster and probably cheaper for people to just fly to Dublin for preclearance than trekking from Edinburgh to Prestwick

And, if you self-connect there, you avoid UK Air Passenger Duty as well

Where Pre-Clearance is needed but will never happen is Heathrow

AlastairFraser said:

It doesn't drive demand, but being the only GB preclearance facility would incentivise a massive uplift in departures, which in turn would require more runway capacity.

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Preclearance doesn't drive demand, it just makes arriving in the US easier. People aren't going to schlep all the way to Edinburgh for the privilege of avoiding a queue which in my experience is usually in the region of 30 minutes (and frequently much shorter!)

AlastairFraser said:

We do have some precedent for services that arrive in the US as domestic - e.g. the BA flight all business class flight London City to JFK via Shannon, and approximately 500k-1 million passengers from the UK who use the UK preclearance at Dublin or Shannon a year. So, no, I can't evidence my earlier claim, but we can see that it would be a popular proposition.

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Those passengers leave the UK from convenient airports like London Heathrow. Unless you're suggesting BA will stop off in Edinburgh on the way to JFK then this imagined massive increase in flights won't happen.