Michael O'Leary pitched up at a press conference in Edinburgh last week and announced an incredible fifteen new routes to Ryanair's winter 2017 schedule from Scotland. The majority of those new routes, thirteen to be precise, will operate from Edinburgh Airport.
It's an amazing growth story and one of the main factors for introducing these new routes seems to be the proposed 50% reduction in APD by Scottish government ( if the SNP government can get the bill through Holyrood as they no longer have a majority) to be implemented in April 2018. So agreement is needed from some of the other parties to get this bill through.
It's not often I find myself agreeing with Mr O'Leary, (as he is a somewhat of a controversial character within the travel trade), but I'm totally with him on this one, as he called for the Scottish government to adopt the Irish model and scrap APD all together.
It will mean a lot of new airport and tourism jobs, as these flights will bring a huge amount of visitors into Scotland and the money they spend flows through the Scottish economy.
However, I understand from the press conference that failure to deliver these APD cuts will result in these new routes being re-evaluated. That's totally understandable - APD has a big bearing on route profitability.
Mr O'Leary is renowned for his ruthless approach to business, so I really hope that the SNP can deliver on their manifesto promise of that 50% reduction in APD, as this is exactly the kind of scenario that they predicted would happen if the cuts were implemented - more jobs and more revenue for the tourist industry. Great news for Scotland!
Let's hope that party politics doesn't get in the way.
