Prestwick was not to escape the decline which blighted Scotland throughout the 1980s however. As the airport decreased in importance – with the major airlines moving to Glasgow, so the supporting industries around the airport also decreased in size. Crisis point was reached in 1992, when the airport was sold by the British Airports Authority and there were fears that it would go out of business. However a local consortium of businessmen bought the airport and began a process of finding a niche for it in the aviation marketplace, first by courting freight traffic and later by partnering budget airlines, who operated cheap short-haul flights. Now the future of Prestwick Airport looks bright.
Industry was also forced to adapt to changed surroundings. Scottish Aviation was incorporated into British Aerospace in 1977, and the aircraft overhaul facilties of Caledonian Airmotive was taken over by General Electric. The last Jetstream rolled off the production line in March 1997, the last aircraft to be built in Scotland, and even the British Aerospace flying college moved to Spain in 1999. This period was a sad time for the town and surrounding area, as most who had worked in aircraft manufacturing had spent the majority of their working lives there, and the company had very much been part of the community for the duration of its existence.