Scots airports do well in annual access report
Scotland’s biggest airports have fared well in the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) annual accessibility index.
Aberdeen and Edinburgh airports were rated very good while Glasgow was rated good.
It marks a major turnaround for Edinburgh which was classed as poor just two years ago.
The report highlights that there are more than three million requests for assistance at UK airports annually – a rise of almost 80% since 2010.
Airports are assessed against a number of measures to establish how well they are performing for disabled and immobile passengers, including asking those passengers using the assistance service how it performed for them.
Three airports, Birmingham, Gatwick and Stansted have not met the CAA's expectations and have been told that they must improve.
Chief executive of Edinburgh Airport, Gordon Dewar said: “We have placed greater emphasis on the PRM service over the past two years and to achieve a very good rating is testament to the hard work put in by everyone involved.
“It’s been a long journey to turn the service around and we tackled that head on, investing more time, staff and funds into a service that we feel is crucial for our passengers and one we take pride in.
“But the most crucial aspect has been directly engaging with disabled passengers who have that lived experience, so we can listen, learn and implement changes that they have told us will improve the service.”
Disability charities welcomed the improvements made but expressed concern several of the largest airports were continuing to fail their disabled passengers.
Neil Heslop, chief executive of Leonard Cheshire, said “it is not acceptable” that some disabled passengers received poor treatment.
In all, 83% of people requesting assistance said they were satisfied with the help they received, while 54% were very satisfied.
"The vast majority of passengers' journeys go smoothly and disabled passengers should have even more confidence to travel from UK airports," the CAA said.
