The Glasgow Airport boss has revealed big ambitions for 2024 including a hopeful return of direct North American flights.

After serving 7.4 million passengers last year, Andy Cliffe is eager to add at least another million to that total in the year ahead by adding new routes, and services and increasing capacity.

As well as the services to and from North America, he also mentioned the potential of introducing flights to and from China which could be used by students in the city.

Speaking to our sister title The Herald, Mr Cliffe said: “We are really pleased with 2023, and we ended about 14% or so growth in traffic over 2022 so you see a really strong post-Covid recovery coming through the business.”

While the start of last year saw the collapse of airline Flybe, Glasgow Airport has achieved strong numbers and it is hoped this will continue with Jet2, easyJet and TUI adding aircraft to their operations.

Meanwhile, Wizz Air also moved back to Glasgow from Edinburgh in November.

Mr Cliffe added: “To produce that kind of growth we are really pleased with.

“We have increased aircraft coming through from Jet2, TUI, [and] easyJet have announced more.”

It comes after we reported that the Emirates’ Airbus A380 returned for daily service between Glasgow and Dubai, landing on the concrete in March 2023 for the first time since 2019.  

The double-decker aircraft, which is more than 24 metres high, can carry a total of 517 passengers.

The highly-anticipated return came ahead of the 20th anniversary of Emirates serving Scotland from Glasgow this April.

Mr Cliffe said: “It is not just the leisure stuff. It is the fact the A380 has come back - that has just continued to be super, super successful.

“It is consistently full, which gives you a sense of the strength both outbound and inbound into this region.”