British Caledonian in the 1970s 31 March 1973 - with the BR airline designator it had inherited from BUA at the time of its formation. This resulted in exclusive use of the BR designator as a prefix for all BCal flight numbers. In 1973, BCal also inaugurated its fourth scheduled domestic trunk route between London Gatwick and Manchester. The new service was contracted to British Island Airways (BIA), BUIA's successor, which operated two daily return trips using its Handley Page Dart Herald turboprops. On 20 March 1974, BCal switched its Gatwick—Paris services to the then brand-new Charles de Gaulle Airport in the northern Paris suburb
Glasgow Prestwick Airport this tough time in the airport's history, saying that "if it hadn't been for Matthew Hudson the airport wouldn't be here today". In 1994, Irish budget airline Ryanair opened a route to the airport from Dublin, followed by a second route in 1995 to London Stansted. In 1998, a third route to Paris-Beauvais was introduced and Prestwick Airport was subsequently sold by Hudson to the Scottish transport company Stagecoach Group, which then sold it to Infratil in 2001. The resulting rapid growth of Ryanair's low-cost routes saw a peak in passenger numbers, with Prestwick carrying over 1,000,000 passengers in 2001.