Mark made a wide ranging speech on the Civil Aviation Bill yesterday which emphasized the need to safeguard the interests of consumers in a number of ways and also touched on environmental safeguards and concerns over turnaround times for pilots.

One of the issues he highlighted was the takeover of bmi by International Airways Group (IAG) which would give British Airways a monopoly on the Edinburgh-Heathrow route. Mark has written to the Office of Fair Trading asking it to look not just at that but the question of choice and competition more broadly for passengers from and to Scotland.

For instance, at present bmi operates also operates direct international flights from Edinburgh to Brussels, Zurich and Copenhagen and if these were to end the choice for Scottish passengers would narrow significantly.

You can read his speech in full here and you can find his letter to the OFT here.