What Edinburgh could learn from the best airports - including a radical alternative expansion option
Key elements of well-performing terminal explained by experts
Aviation experts have set out the key elements for success - used by other leading airports - from which Edinburgh could learn in its biggest-ever expansion.
They pointed to some gold standard terminals with similar passenger numbers to Edinburgh - and a radical approach taken by several major European airports which were also bursting at the seams.
Edinburgh - the sixth busiest in the UK after four in London and Manchester - is expanding at 5 per cent a year and expects to handle nearly 18 million passengers in 2026 - twice as many as 15 years ago.
The key elements for success, according to International Airport Review editor Holly Miles, involve optimising passenger flow through the terminal.
She said: “The airports that consistently excel in passenger experience tend to share the same characteristics: intuitive terminal design, minimal queuing, efficient security processing, clear wayfinding, good retail and food offerings, plentiful seating and charging facilities, and the effective use of technology to remove friction from the passenger journey.”
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Ms Miles said Helsinki Airport was often cited as one of Europe's strongest performers “due to its intuitive layout and extensive terminal redevelopment programme with strong use of Nordic biophilic [natural] design principles to create a calm, passenger-friendly environment”.
Among other airports with similar passenger numbers to Edinburgh, Prague “has earned a reputation for operational efficiency, straightforward passenger flows and effective adoption of technology to streamline the journey through security and the terminal environment”, she said.
Meanwhile, Ms Miles said Tampa in Florida was frequently referenced by airport professionals as a benchmark for passenger convenience.
She said: “Its compact design, short walking distances, automated people-mover system and highly intuitive wayfinding create a low-stress travel experience.”
However, Ms Miles said Edinburgh was far from the bottom of the scale, despite widespread complaints such as about baggage delays and passport queues.
She pointed to the “significant industry recognition” it had achieved as overall winner at the Routes Europe 2025 awards and winning the Routes World Awards 10-17.5m passenger category this year - “reflecting the airport's success in developing new air services, strengthening airline partnerships and increasing destination choice for passengers”.
Ms Miles said: “Edinburgh is generally regarded as a solid mid-tier European airport from a passenger experience perspective.
“It is currently rated as a three-star airport (out of five) by [assessment body] Skytrax, which places it in the middle of the scale between basic and world-leading airports.
“While ratings only tell part of the story, Edinburgh performs particularly well for an airport operating within significant space constraints and handling close to 18m passengers annually.”
Meantime, Simon Calder proposed a radical alternative to the airport’s expansion plans in a special Fit to Fly? podcast, available at scotsman.com.
He said: “I'm afraid probably most passengers at Edinburgh, and that includes me, will not want the answer that I'm about to give.
“Basically, you take a leaf out of the book of places like Marseille and Lisbon and you put up a huge shed and that is your low-cost terminal.
“It’s fairly spartan but it’s effective - you’ve just got fast turnaround locations, and that’s not actually a bad plan for somewhere like Edinburgh, which has a mix of ‘legacy’ full-service airlines and the low-cost carriers.
“You’d say: Okay everybody, over there, yeah it’s not very nice and not very warm and you can’t get much beyond an over-priced coffee, but you’re going to get to your destination.
“So if I were wanting to spend half a billion pounds on improving things, I would probably build the biggest shed I could possibly come up with and put Easyjet, Ryanair and everybody else in there.
“That would separate the problem and would mean that quite possibly Edinburgh would then attract even more of the full-service airlines like Qatar Airways and Emirates and the US and Canadian carriers because they’ll say, yeah you can give us a bit more of a premium feel here.
“If you’re catering, as increasingly Edinburgh is for business travellers, then that’s not a bad thing to have, whereas at the same time the proletariat are all kind of sitting around slightly grumpily in this big, big shed.”
Mr Calder said Edinburgh’s approach to overhauling its terminal, which it has compared to changing an aircraft engine in flight, would be tricky but feasible.
He said: “Doing almost anything at an airport is incredibly difficult. It will of course be disruptive, but I think places like Heathrow and Gatwick have shown that you can just about get away with it.
“Everything in an airport is about flow and making sure people can get to their gate and get to their destination, and there will be various mitigations put in place to try to make sure that will happen.
“Concentrating the work between late October and late March will mean the impact is less than it would otherwise be, but that doesn’t coincide always with spectacularly good weather in Edinburgh.”
Mark Johnston, the airport’s new chief executive, has acknowledged problems with passengers’ arrival experience including baggage reclaim delays, which are the responsibility of airlines’ handling agents.
Border Force, part of the UK Home Office responsible for passport checks, said: “The passenger arrival survey found overall satisfaction with the border crossing process has remained consistently high” - with 89-92 per cent of respondents satisfied in the year to March.
“We are working closely with the port operator and its infrastructure leads to ensure Border Force is given adequate facilities that will allow it to operate a robust and secure border.”
Jay Roberts, its Scotland East lead, said in May: “There will be peak times when you will see queues, so we are looking to draft in more staff at those times so hopefully we can reduce them.
“We want to make the passenger experience as painless and swift as possible, and I’m quite confident we will do that.”
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