Once a relatively small operation serving mainly domestic and regional destinations, today Edinburgh ranks as one of the busiest and fastest growing in the UK. Gordon Smith speaks to the management team at the rapidly expanding complex to discover the secret of its success.
It’s Thursday morning, Edinburgh airport’s check-in hall is busy with business and leisure passengers undergoing their usual pre-flight routines. Bags are weighed, passports verified and boarding passes issued; fundamentally, it is a scene that has changed little over the decades. Yet look a little closer and you’ll see this isn’t the airport it was even five years ago, never mind 50. Beijing sits alongside Birmingham and Bristol on the busy departure board – with Doha, Dubai and New York also making an appearance. While the airport is never going to rival the might of Heathrow or Gatwick, in recent years the Scottish capital has chalked up an impressive roster of direct routes to destinations that were once served almost exclusively from London or Manchester.