Air connectivity strengthens the fabric of our union
Wilma Allan, Chief Financial Officer and interim joint CEO at London City Airport
Aviation matters to all parts of the United Kingdom. It’s a success story that boosts the national economy, creates tens of thousands of jobs and connects us to the world. It also links us at home – bringing the Union closer together.
You only have to look at the thousands of people wearing the red rose of England and the tartan of Scotland, travelling through London City last weekend as they headed to the Six Nations rugby match in Edinburgh, to understand the importance of air connectivity to social and cultural occasions.
Burns’ Night. The Edinburgh Festival. These are great and historic occasions that friends and families look forward to every year. As someone who has worked with both trains and planes – and made countless trips back to my family home in Aberdeenshire – I have seen first-hand how transport connectivity supports these cultural events and tourism more widely.
Many people tend to think of London City as an airport primarily for business travellers – which, historically, it was – but this has changed dramatically, with more than half of our passengers now using the airport for leisure and visiting friends and family; and a large proportion of these passengers are heading to and from Scotland. Almost one in five last year.
That said, air connectivity for businesses across the Union is vital. Air links for Scottish businesses – large and small – to London generates significant commercial opportunities. Take the ExCeL Centre, located a stone’s throw away from London City Airport. It’s one of the UK’s largest conference and exhibition centres in the UK, with a capacity of nearly 70,000 – larger than most Premier League football stadiums. Being in such close proximity to the airport means that a Scottish exhibitor could easily jump on the 6 am flight from Edinburgh, arrive at City Airport within 90 minutes and be setting up their stand at the ExCeL by 8 am.
Scotland is moving towards a high-tech economy – predicted to be the second fastest growing sector over the next five years. Likewise, in 2022, Edinburgh was named the UK’s top innovation city after London, and its high-growth companies drew more than £1.2bn in investment in the last decade. Air connectivity will facilitate this growth even further. Safe and speedy connections between Edinburgh and London enable easy access for cutting-edge Scottish start-ups to access additional investment – the kind of finance that could help scale their businesses and provide more jobs and growth across the UK economy.
Domestic air connectivity will also be a useful instrument in helping to advance green aviation technologies for more sustainable travel. Scottish airline, Loganair, has announced that it’s looking at the possibility of introducing hydrogen-powered ‘Islander’ planes as soon as this year. As the sector seeks to operate more sustainably, short-haul flights offer an opportunity to pioneer sustainable aviation practices before they are scaled-up to longer flights. By investing in research and development, as well as infrastructure upgrades, domestic UK flights will be the testbed and leaders of innovation in this space.
Events like the Calcutta Cup last weekend are a subtle reminder of how air travel brings us closer together. We must support this asset and embrace the exciting future that is coming with groundbreaking technologies such as green hydrogen, which will eventually lead to zero emissions flight. The success of this will be contingent on continued close collaboration across the Union; whatever the results of the Six Nations tournament.