Dundee Airport has long been the butt of jibes and jokes.
For years it has been seen as something of a ‘toytown’ airport it was infamously called such in a tabloid expose several years ago of little significance to the ordinary citizen.
The news that passenger volumes at the Riverside airfield have now fallen below those in the tiny Outer Hebridean outpost of Benbecula has done little to shake that unfortunate view.
But perhaps even more stark is the comparison with Inverness, a city less than half the size of Dundee, which last year welcomed in excess of 600,000 passengers.
The figure is more than 10 times greater than Dundee was on track to handle last year even before the airport was hit with a further hammer blow in the form of the withdrawal of Loganair’s two flights to Birmingham and Belfast.
The numbers do not make for good reading. The reality is that Dundee and the wider city region encompassing Perth, Angus and North-East Fife need strong airport links to support economic regeneration.
The ability to move around quickly and cheaply is an absolute must for businesses as they develop and grow.
Being just an hour’s flight away from a global economic powerhouse such as London, and the wordwide connections its hub airports offer, means that Dundee and its thousands of homegrown businesses are in the game.
Take that link away and Tayside and north Fife suddenly find themselves economically isolated a situation from which no good can come.
The problems with Dundee Airport are fairly obvious to the casual outside observer. The fares are too high, there is far too little choice, and the runway is apparently not long enough to accommodate larger passenger jets such as the Boeing 737 staple of the budget airlines.
Add in stiff competition from Edinburgh and Glasgow airports which offer the prospect of economic travel to a range of world destinations through volume carriers like Ryanair and Easyjet and Dundee’s single flight to London City pales into insignificance.
The task of revitalising the loss-making airport’s fortunes is clearly huge, and operators HIAL wholly owned by the Scottish Government have to demonstrate they are up for that fight.
The pitch has to be right, though. HIAL needs to spell out in no uncertain terms to the airline executives what the city and wider region can do for them as opposed to just what they can do for Dundee.
There is a gamechanger on the horizon in the guise of the £45m V&A design museum, and at the waterfront as a whole the very zone in which the airport falls there is committed ongoing investment totalling almost £500 million.
Let us not forget that Dundee Airport also lies equidistant between the home of golf at St Andrews and the historic Open Championship venue of Carnoustie.
The twin draw of those two locations alone should be enough to drive air traffic to the area.
HIAL says it is committed to Dundee, but it needs to show its ambitions are real by beating down the doors of the major carriers to make the city’s case.
Dundee may not be able to handle the biggest commercial jets, but it has the capacity to handle mid-sized aircraft carrying 100 or more passengers.
HIAL needs to act now. The airport is too important to the long-term economic health of the region to allow its drawn-out demise to go unchecked.
business@thecourier.co.uk