Glasgow Prestwick International Airport

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Glasgow Prestwick Airport Prestwick Airport
IATA: PIK - ICAO: EGPK
Summary
Airport type		Public
Operator		Infratil
Serves		[[Glasgow and Ayrshire]]
Elevation AMSL		65 ft (20 m)
Coordinates		55°30′34″N, 004°35′12″W
Runways
Direction	Length		Surface
	ft	m
13/31	9,799	2,987	Concrete/Asphalt
03/21	6,000	1,829	Asphalt

Glasgow Prestwick International Airport (IATA: PIK, ICAO: EGPK) is situated north of the town of Prestwick in South Ayrshire, Scotland. Although officially called Glasgow Prestwick Airport because the city of Glasgow is 46 km (29 miles) north-east of the airport, most people, particularly locals, refer to it under its original name of Prestwick Airport. The last ten years has seen unprecedented growth in passenger traffic using the airport driven, in the main, by the boom in "no-frills" airlines.

In physical terms, Prestwick is Scotland's largest commercial airfield, although in passenger traffic terms it sits in fourth place after Glasgow's main airport, Glasgow International, Edinburgh Airport, and Aberdeen Airport all of which are operated by BAA.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Prestwick Air Show 1.2 Change in the 1990s 2 Airlines and destinations 2.1 Charter and holiday 2.2 Cargo airlines serving Prestwick 3 Future 4 Incidents and accidents 5 Further reading 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] History

The airport began life around 1934 — primarily as a training airfield — with a hangar, offices and control tower being in place by the end of 1935. The airport's original owner was David Fowler McIntyre, who was also the owner of Scottish Aviation with backing from the then Duke of Hamilton. MacIntyre and Hamilton had previously been the first aviators to fly atop Mount Everest in 1933. With the onset of World War II, the airport developed rapidly in order to handle the large volume of American aircraft ferry traffic.

In 1938 passenger facilities were added, which were used continuously until the implementation of a massive investment programme to make Prestwick compatible with the new jet transports which were becoming available. A runway extension, parallel taxiway, link road, and an all-new terminal building were opened by the Queen Mother in 1964. The new construction had caused considerable disruption to road users, so much so that during the lengthening of the main runway, the main road into Ayr actually crossed the tarmac. This had to be strictly controlled by a "level crossing" type system until the new perimeter road was completed.

The US Air Force had opened a base in 1952 on the site of the original airport using former RAF facilities (the USAF MATS 1631st Air Base Squadron), and in [1953 on the Monkton side of the airport, both used by the USAF[Military Air Transportation Service (MATS). This base closed in 1966, part of the site is occupied by RNAS Prestwick, more popularly known as HMS Gannet, from whence a detachment of 771 Naval Air Squadron Sea Kings provide a Search and Rescue service.

There had been proposed plans drawn up pre-war for the post war years which would have been classed as extremely ambitious, especially in the austere post-war years. Among the various proposals was a 4 mile long main runway, an integral freight yard and railway station, and a semi enclosed mooring for flying boats and other amphibious aircraft. However, the runway was never lengthened to that degree, and the decline in seaplane and flying boat operations also meant that the latter proposal was never enacted. It is telling however, that many years since those proposals were made, that Prestwick Airport does have its own railway station, something that even Glasgow Airport does not have.

Scottish Aviation built a factory using the original terminal building and hangars at Prestwick, which produced such aircraft as the Prestwick Pioneers, and later the Jetstream and Bulldog. One part of the factory, the large white art-deco building which remains to this day, had in fact been the Palace of Engineering that had been built as part of the Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow in 1938. When Scottish Aviation merged with British Aerospace as a result of the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act, BAe maintained aircraft production at the site until 1998, primarily updates of the Jetstream line. Today BAE Systems retains a small facility at Prestwick for its Regional Aircraft division, with the adjoining main manufacturing site, producing components for Airbus and Boeing aircraft, having been sold to Spirit AeroSystems in January 2006.

In the beginning, Prestwick was the only Scottish airport allowed to operate a transatlantic link, largely due to the very benign weather conditions on the Ayrshire coast. Indeed, with a much lower incidence of fog than any other airport in Great Britain due to a geological anomaly, Prestwick is the only guaranteed fog-free airport in the UK. This is perhaps one reason it managed to avoid total closure when it appeared that BAA seemed to be running down operations. It was also partly a political decision to silence those that questioned why Glasgow needed two airports when Glasgow Corporation had already invested money building Glasgow Airport.

Although British Airways had ceased regular passenger operations in the late 1970s which some people saw as the beginning of the end for the airport, BA continued to intermittently use Prestwick as a site for pilot training, especially for training Concorde pilots. Concorde became a semi-regular visitor to the airport, and indeed BA and a number of other major airlines still use Prestwick for pilot training.

Prestwick Airport is also famous because it is the only piece of United Kingdom territory that Elvis Presley set foot on, when his US Army transport plane stopped to refuel in 1960, whilst en route from Germany.

[edit] Prestwick Air Show

Prestwick Airport also used to host a bi-annual airshow, the first of which was held on 30 September 1967. While very small in scale compared to such shows as RAF Fairford or Farnborough, the air show was a local attraction and drew a considerable crowd. There were constant rumours in later years that the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft would make an appearance, but this came to nothing, most likely due to difficulties associated with handling the special fuel. The last air show was in 1992 and there have been no efforts at reviving it since.

[edit] Change in the 1990s

In 1991 the newly-privatised British Airports Authority, BAA plc consolidated their portfolio of UK airports. Part of this was to move all transatlantic traffic departing from Scotland to Glasgow Airport, near Paisley, and sell Prestwick off to the private sector. In the early-to-mid 1990s passenger figures fell sharply with only freight traffic and a small number of charter flights using Prestwick on a regular basis. At this point the airport faced an uncertain future.

1994 marked the beginning of a renaissance for the struggling airport. It took the shrewd move of building its own railway station on the existing Glasgow-Ayr line, which runs straight past the airfield. Then, Irish budget line Ryanair opened a route to the airport from Dublin. This led to another route to London the following year. The resulting rapid growth of European no-frills airlines in the late 1990s has seen Prestwick grow even larger than it had ever been in traffic terms under state ownership. Ryanair now serves 20 destinations from Prestwick – now one of their maintenance hubs – and other budget airlines have also moved into the airport.

Today, as well as the thriving no-frills segment, Prestwick has continued its traditional strategic role as a refuelling point for military aircraft – the US Air Force, RAF and the Canadian Armed Forces are frequent visitors for example. Cargo traffic has also become another stronghold of Prestwick with the vast majority of Scotland's Boeing 747 Freighter traffic entering via the airport.

The airport is privately owned by Infratil, a New Zealand investment company which also owns Wellington International Airport. In April 2005, Infratil completed a major £3m refurbishment of the terminal building, and also controversially rebranded the airport using the phrase "Pure Dead Brilliant", taken straight from the Glasgow Patter. Some of this rebranding has been controversial, in particular the redecoration of the airport bar. The bar was rebranded in February 2006 with a logo depicting a man in a kilt, unconscious with an empty bottle of whisky. Despite objections that it promoted the wrong image of Scotland to foreign visitors and embarrassed local travellers, the airport management insisted the logo was "fun and visually stimulating". However, the logo was removed on 3 March 2006, only several weeks after its introduction, after the intervention of the South Ayrshire Licensing Board who said the logo trivialised excessive drinking.^[1]

On 6 July 2005, Prestwick Airport became the entry point into Scotland for the world's most powerful leaders on the eve of the G8 Summit which was being held in Gleneagles. Strathclyde Police implemented an unprecedented level of security around the airport for the duration of the summit. Officers from police forces throughout the UK were drafted in to assist in the operation, including armed officers. In preparation for the landing of Air Force One, carrying US president George W. Bush, the A77, which runs past the end of the main runway, was controversially closed while the aircraft was on final approach.

[edit] Airlines and destinations

• Aer Arann (Donegal)
• Ryanair (Bournemouth, Brussels-Charleroi, Derry, Dublin, Girona, Gothenburg-City, Grenoble, Hahn, Krakow, London-Stansted, Marseille, Milan-Bergamo, Murcia, Oslo-Torp, Paris-Beauvais, Pisa, Riga, Rome-Ciampino, Reus, Shannon, Stockholm-Skavsta, Weeze, Wroclaw)
• transavia.com (Amsterdam)
• Wizzair (Gdansk, Warsaw)

[edit] Charter and holiday

Holiday airlines operating from Prestwick vary seasonally, but include MyTravel Airways, Britannia Airways, Balkan Holidays and LTE. Flights are normally operated to Spain, Portugal and Bulgaria.

• Spanair (Barcelona)

[edit] Cargo airlines serving Prestwick

Regular freight operators include Cargolux, Polar Air Cargo, Atlas Air, British Airways World Cargo, Air France Cargo, Northwest Airlines Cargo, Evergreen International and Singapore Airlines Cargo – the majority operating Boeing 747-400F aircraft, with Polar Air having a maintenance hangar at the airport. Air Foyle HeavyLift and Volga-Dnepr are also occasional users of Prestwick with Antonov An-124 aircraft.

[edit] Future

A multimillion pound plan to double the size of the departure lounge has been proposed. Prestwick has pledged to be ready and willing to handle the Airbus A380. A two storey building is being considered to replace the current arrivals and departure halls. One floor would be used for departures and the other for arrivals. It would also raise the amount of aircraft stances from 6 to 12. This process will take 18 months.

[edit] Incidents and accidents

• The first serious air accident at Prestwick was the KLM disaster on 20 October 1948. A Lockheed Constellation of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crashed in a field 5 miles north east of the airport while attempting to approach in bad weather. The aircraft had already aborted a landing due to strong crosswinds and had negotiated with air traffic control to approach using a different runway. It was on that approach the Constellation struck power cables and crashed. A combination of poor weather and pilot error were to blame for the crash, with the flight crew having an incorrect above ground level reading. 30 passengers and 4 crew died in the accident, 6 having survived the initial impact but having suffered fatal injuries.

• Early on Christmas Day 1954, at 0330 hours, a BOAC Boeing 377 Stratocruiser crashed on landing at Prestwick, killing 28 of the 36 passengers and crew onboard. The aircraft had been en route from London to New York, when, on approach to Prestwick, entered a steep descent before levelling out too late and too severely, hitting the ground short of the runway. A number of factors have been attributed to the cause of the crash, including pilot fatigue (the captain was well over his duty limit due to the aircraft being delayed), the landing lights at Prestwick being out of action due to repair and the First Officer either not hearing a command from the Captain for landing lights (which may have helped judge the low cloud base) or mistakenly hitting the flaps, causing the aircraft to stall.

The Stratocruiser had been carrying uncut diamonds in registered mail, then valued at over £1m, though it would be several days after the accident that investigators had any hint of the cargo being carried. An extensive search was carried out in the area surrounding the crash for several weeks, resulting in over 90% of the diamonds being recovered. The KLM Constellation that crashed near Prestwick 6 years earlier had also been carrying diamonds, then valued at over £5000.

• On 28 April 1958 a BEA Vickers Viscount crashed just outside Ayr on a repositioning flight from London after the pilot misread the altimeter by 10,000 ft. The aircraft skidded across the ground before catching fire. All 5 crew survived.

• A British Airtours Boeing 707 crashed during crew training at Prestwick on 17 March 1977. The aircraft had been simulating an engine shutdown on take-off, causing it to tend to the left. Though the instructor took control of the aircraft, the engine simulating shutdown struck the runway and the aeroplane yawed and rolled violently to the right, causing the undercarriage to collapse and resulting in the engines being ripped off. None of the 4 crew were injured and there were no casualties on the ground.

• Another simulated engine failure resulted in the crash of a BAe Jetstream on 6 October 1992, killing both crew members. While attempting to trace which engine had simulated failure, the co-pilot had forgotten to retract the undercarriage. While retracting the undercarriage, the aircraft stalled, rolled and struck the ground inverted.

• Prestwick and London Stansted Airport in Essex, are the only two airports in the UK designated for "at risk" flights. In April 2006, two aircraft were diverted to Prestwick under RAF escort in separate incidents; a Ryanair flight between Paris and Dublin, and an Aer Arran flight from Luton to Galway. In both instances, a note found by cabin crew warning of a bomb on board turned out to be hoaxes. Bomb Disposal cover for Prestwick, and indeed for the whole of Scotland, is covered by an Army Troop from 11 EOD Regiment of the Royal Logistic Corps, based in Edinburgh.

[edit] Further reading

• Ewart, J (1985) Prestwick Airport Golden Jubilee 1935-1985
• Berry, P (2005) Prestwick Airport and Scottish Aviation

[edit] See also

Aeronautical Information Publication

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Glasgow Prestwick Airport Homepage
• Irish refused bombs sent to Prestwick airport, Scotland on Sunday, 30 July, 2006