New Edinburgh Airport owner pledges to tackle passengers' number one gripe

VINCI’s vow came as seller Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), which retains a 49.99 per cent stake, said the airport’s new security lanes would be the “best in the world”.

Passengers are unlikely to see any immediate changes following the ownership change.

But airport chief executive Gordon Dewar said VINCI’s expertise as one of the world’s largest airport groups would help “enhance and improve” - as well as accelerate - its development plans.

VINCI Airports president Nicolas Notebaert said: “Security flows is key to the quality of airports.”

He said Edinburgh’s biggest airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet “want good security flow management, and that’s our commitment because we believe it’s the right policy”.

Michael McGhee, founder partner of GIP, which bought the airport in 2012 and has a similar partnership with VINCI at Gatwick, told The Scotsman: “What people don’t like is queues, which is why under our ownership we have really focused on cutting the queues.

“You can see the investment in check-in and security. We’ve started to ripple out at both Gatwick and Edinburgh new security lanes, which will be done by the end of the year. We think we’ll have the most efficient, best in the world, so that’s going to be huge.”

Edinburgh has installed the first of its new scanners, which will eventually enable passengers to carry liquids in their hand luggage in containers up to 2 litres compared to 100ml at present.

Mr McGhee said creating more space for passengers airside, such as seating, was another priority. The airport expects to handle a record of more than 15 million passengers this year, topping 2019’s 14.4m.

The GIP chief said: “The next thing is expansion. That’s what we have already been working on, so that’s the big priority. We want people to have a pleasant experience.

“Having got through [security], people want to be in as pleasant a place as possible, and that means not just space, but choice in terms of retail and things to do, and they want it to work efficiently because people don’t want to be delayed.”

Mr Notebaert said there would be expansion of retail units airside to make passengers “a little bit more happy and spending a little bit more”. He said future innovations could include using artificial intelligence to detect the contents of luggage.

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Mr Notebaert also said the airport would prioritise winning more long-haul routes, with China “clearly a good target”. Mr Dewar said: “The general direction of travel is accommodating the growth that we know is coming, so we have to build a bit of everything.

“The terminal needs more [aircraft boarding/disembarking] gate space and more stands, and we have major refurbishment of the runway coming up in the next two years.

“What we’re hoping is the VINCI experience will allow us to build better and more efficiently using innovative techniques. We have the opportunity to grow faster, and put customer service and sustainability at the heart of that.”