ANDREW BATCHELOR: Dundee Airport has lost its flights, but it can still have a future

Dundee Airport may have lost its flights. It doesn’t necessarily have to lose its future.

There is something incredibly sad about imagining Dundee Airport without a single scheduled passenger flight.

For decades, the little airport beside the Tay has provided Dundee with something many cities of its size do not have: an airport almost on the doorstep of the city centre.

Now, following Loganair’s decision to withdraw its Dundee services, that era is facing an abrupt end.

Flights to London Heathrow, Kirkwall and Sumburgh are set to disappear, leaving Dundee Airport without scheduled commercial passenger services.

For anyone who cares deeply about Dundee and its future, it is difficult not to see that as a major setback.

But I don’t believe this should be the end of the story.

In fact, perhaps this should finally force a much bigger conversation about Dundee Airport and what we actually want it to become.

Dundee has changed. Why hasn’t its airport?

Think about how much Dundee has transformed over the past two decades.

Our waterfront has been completely reshaped. V&A Dundee has opened. The railway station has been transformed. New hotels have arrived. The city’s universities continue to attract people from across the world, while Dundee has developed growing strengths in tourism, life sciences, technology, gaming and culture.

Yet during all of that transformation, Dundee Airport has never really undergone the same reinvention.

That is particularly frustrating because conversations about its future are hardly new.

A Transport Scotland study into the airport’s prospects more than a decade ago examined different options for Dundee, including attracting new routes and aviation businesses.

It even concluded that the possibility of a joint operational facility at RAF Leuchars could be explored with the Ministry of Defence if that offered advantages over the continuing subsidy required at Dundee.

Perhaps most strikingly, the report argued that it would be prudent not to close Dundee to commercial aviation until the market had been properly understood and every avenue for attracting airlines had been exhausted.

It also made the wider point that closing an airport and losing a runway is a significant decision for a region.

More than a decade later, Dundee has arrived at precisely the sort of crossroads that report contemplated.

Replacing Loganair cannot be the entire strategy

The immediate priority will understandably be finding out whether another airline can provide scheduled flights from Dundee.

Dundee City Council is looking at the feasibility of establishing another Public Service Obligation route, and every realistic opportunity to restore scheduled connectivity should be explored.

But simply finding another airline to operate another subsidised Dundee to London service cannot be the extent of our ambition.

The loss of Loganair should instead prompt the Scottish Government, Dundee City Council, Highlands and Islands Airports Limited, businesses and the wider Tay Cities region to ask a much more fundamental question.

What is Dundee Airport actually for?

If substantial public money is going to continue being invested in keeping an airport operational, Dundee needs a clear answer.

Could another airline make Dundee work?

First, we shouldn’t assume that Loganair leaving means scheduled flying from Dundee is impossible.

The market should be tested.

Could another regional operator make a Dundee route viable under a different model?

Could a future PSO provide better timings, fares or connections?

And does London necessarily have to be the only destination around which Dundee Airport is built?

There could potentially be opportunities elsewhere in the UK or Ireland, although any proposed route would have to be backed by robust evidence of demand rather than simply drawing destinations on a map.

Dundee also has a substantial tourism proposition that did not exist in its current form when some of these conversations began.

We have V&A Dundee, a transformed waterfront and some of the world’s most famous golf courses within easy travelling distance. St Andrews is practically on Dundee Airport’s doorstep.

Instead of seeing the airport purely as a way for Dundonians to leave the city, greater consideration should be given to how it could bring visitors into Dundee, Angus, Perthshire and north-east Fife.

Dundee’s greatest advantage is also part of its problem

Dundee Airport occupies an extraordinary location.

You can land beside the River Tay and be in the city centre within minutes.

For business travellers, tourists and private aviation, that convenience should be an enormous selling point.

But the same location creates limitations.

Dundee has a relatively short runway and a constrained site. There is no pretending that it can accommodate the same aircraft or aviation activity as Scotland’s larger airports.

That means Dundee needs a strategy designed specifically around what its airport can realistically do, rather than what we might wish it could do.

Look at Prestwick, but don’t try to copy it

Glasgow Prestwick Airport provides an interesting example of why an airport’s success does not have to be judged solely by its passenger departures board.

Prestwick has increasingly diversified its role, developing cargo, military, executive and aerospace operations alongside scheduled passenger flights.

Its cargo business has grown dramatically and the airport recently reported its seventh consecutive year of operating profit.

But let’s be clear: Dundee is not Prestwick.

Prestwick’s main runway is almost 3,000 metres long and can accommodate virtually every type of aircraft. Dundee is a much smaller and more physically constrained airport.

Dundee isn’t suddenly going to become an international cargo hub handling huge freighters from China.

That’s not the point.

The lesson from Prestwick is the thinking behind its strategy.

An airport does not necessarily have to rely on one type of passenger service to justify its existence. It can identify the things its location, infrastructure and surrounding economy make it particularly well suited to doing.

So rather than asking how Dundee can become another Prestwick, perhaps we should ask what Dundee can become that other Scottish airports are not.

Business aviation, golf and charter flights

One area worth examining much more seriously is business and charter aviation.

Dundee’s location could be an advantage here.

The airport is close to the city centre, major businesses, universities and some of Scotland’s most important golf destinations.

Anyone who has watched aviation movements around major golfing events in this part of Scotland will understand the potential importance of private and charter aircraft.

Could Dundee establish itself more deliberately as a specialist gateway for golf tourism and business aviation?

Could facilities be improved to make the airport more attractive to suitable aircraft and operators?

It won’t replace hundreds of thousands of scheduled passengers, but that isn’t necessarily the objective.

The aim should be to build several complementary reasons for Dundee Airport to exist rather than depending overwhelmingly on one scheduled route.

Could Dundee become a home for the future of aviation?

There is another possibility which excites me considerably more.

Why shouldn’t Dundee look towards the next generation of aviation?

Electric aircraft, hybrid propulsion, drones and new forms of regional air mobility are developing rapidly.

Dundee has universities, engineering expertise, a technology sector and a history of innovation.

Could the airport become somewhere for aviation research, testing, training and skills development?

Could partnerships be developed with universities, colleges and industry?

Could Dundee establish an aviation academy or expand opportunities around pilot training, engineering and apprenticeships?

Interestingly, these aren’t entirely new ideas either. The previous Transport Scotland work on Dundee Airport specifically raised aviation training, additional hangar development, business aviation and reducing the airport’s reliance on revenue from commercial passengers as areas worth investigating.

Perhaps some of those old ideas deserve to be dusted off and viewed through the opportunities of the 2030s rather than the aviation market of the 2010s.

And then there is Leuchars

This is perhaps the biggest and most difficult question of all.

During previous discussions about Dundee Airport’s future, Leuchars was considered as a possible long-term alternative through some form of joint military and civilian operation.

That doesn’t mean Dundee Airport should simply be moved there.

It would involve enormous practical, financial, military and political considerations. Leuchars also serves an entirely different purpose and any proposal would require the agreement of the Ministry of Defence.

But surely the question deserves serious examination.

If Dundee’s existing airport is fundamentally constrained by its runway and location, what does aviation connectivity for the wider Dundee and Tay region look like in 2040 or 2050?

Can the existing airport fulfil that role?

Could it be developed?

Or could civilian operations at Leuchars eventually provide opportunities that are physically impossible beside Riverside Drive?

I don’t pretend to know the answer.

That’s exactly why a proper modern feasibility study would be worthwhile.

Dundee Airport needs a new purpose

Scotland’s airports perform very different jobs.

Edinburgh has developed into Scotland’s largest international passenger airport. Glasgow has its own substantial domestic and international network. Prestwick has carved out important roles in passengers, freight, military and specialist aviation. Airports across the Highlands and Islands provide essential connectivity for remote communities.

So where does Dundee fit?

That question has become more urgent than ever.

Perhaps the answer is a smaller specialist airport combining scheduled regional connectivity with business aviation, tourism, training and emerging aviation technologies.

Perhaps scheduled services can return and form an important part of its future.

Perhaps, in the much longer term, Leuchars provides a different answer.

But doing nothing cannot be the strategy.

Keeping Dundee Airport technically open while watching its relevance gradually diminish would benefit nobody.

This should be a beginning, not an ending

I am devastated that Dundee is losing its scheduled flights.

There is no point pretending otherwise.

For a city which has spent years talking about connectivity, tourism, investment and international ambition, losing its remaining scheduled air services feels like a backwards step.

But Dundee knows a thing or two about reinvention.

We have transformed an industrial waterfront into a destination attracting visitors from around the world. We have reinvented former industrial buildings, developed new industries and repeatedly challenged outdated perceptions of what Dundee can be.

There is no reason why that same ambition cannot be applied to our airport.

What I would like to see now is a genuine long-term strategy for Dundee Airport, bringing together the Scottish Government, HIAL, Dundee City Council, the wider Tay Cities region, universities, tourism organisations, businesses and the aviation industry.

Explore everything.

New airlines. New routes. Business aviation. Golf tourism. Charter operations. Flight training. Aviation education. Electric aircraft. New technology. Infrastructure investment. And, yes, even whether Leuchars has a role in the region’s longer-term aviation future.

Some ideas will prove impractical. Others may never get off the ground.

But we won’t know unless we seriously investigate them.

Dundee Airport may have lost its flights. It doesn’t necessarily have to lose its future.