The first thing that strikes you about the airport, going airside in a minibus, is the scale of the airfield and the aerospace cluster around it.

You can gain some sense of the size of the cluster from the road which passes in front of Prestwick Airport. However, it is only once you have travelled round the back of the main terminal building that the full extent of these operations, and indeed the size of the airport itself become crystal clear.

Nico Le Roux, who heads the cargo operations at Prestwick, puts the number of jobs supported by the airport at the aerospace cluster at around 4,000. This excludes the 354 people employed directly by the airport - a number that is set to rise to around 400 with an ambitious expansion of the cargo operations.

He notes, as we pass it, Ryanair’s engineering facility at Prestwick Airport, which accounts for more than 600 jobs in the cluster.

The cluster includes Storm Aviation, GE Aerospace’s Caledonian operation, and Spirit AeroSystems, among a raft of big names in the industry.

The airport declares itself "the heart of Scotland’s aerospace industry, with over 50% of the country’s aerospace workforce employed at Prestwick, offering a diverse range of aviation services and providing vital connections to the rest of the world”.

Taking in the scale of the operations around the airport, that seems like a fair enough assessment.

From various places immediately around the airport and within a few miles of it, you can see there are, in spite of the impression the airport’s detractors might want to give as they seethe or simmer over the Scottish Government’s rescue of it, plenty of aircraft movements.

This activity includes landings and take-offs by cargo planes, military aircraft, passenger flights, and private jets, as well as pilot training. Given the variety of aircraft coming and going, it is no surprise that the “mound” at the airport is frequented by many plane spotters, many keen to post what they are watching on social media. There are a few atop the mound as we pass.

There is far less bustle and excitement at Prestwick Airport in terms of passengers than in the past, whether that be going all the way back to the transatlantic flights of bygone decades........

© Herald Scotland