Former First Minister of Scotland Jack McConnell greets then President of the United States George W. Bush and Laura Bush to Scotland on 6 July 2005 at the airport
In 1991 the newly-privatised British Airports Authority, BAA Limited consolidated their portfolio of UK airports. Part of this was to move all transatlantic traffic departing from Scotland to Glasgow International Airport, near Paisley, and sell Prestwick off to the private sector. In the early-to-mid 1990s passenger figures fell sharply with only freight traffic and a small number of charter flights using Prestwick on a regular basis. At this point the airport faced an uncertain future.
1992 marked the beginning of a renaissance for the struggling airport when purchased by "canadian entrepreneur"[10] Matthew Hudson in a "dramatic rescue". Hudson took the move of building the airport's own railway station on the existing Ayrshire Coast Line (Glasgow-Ayr), which runs straight past the airfield, making the airport the first in Scotland to have its own railway station.In her book about Prestwick Airport, South Ayrshire councillor Ann Galbraith writes about 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".Then, Irish budget airline Ryanair opened a route to the airport from Dublin. This led to another route to London the following year. The resulting rapid growth of European no-frills airlines in the late 1990s saw Prestwick grow even larger than it had ever been, in traffic terms, under state ownership. In 1998, Matthew Hudson sold Prestwick Airport to Stagecoach,[13] a large Scottish transportation group helmed by Sir Brian Souter.
Today, Ryanair now serves more than 20 destinations from Prestwick – now one of their maintenance hubs – and other budget airlines have also moved into the airport. As well as the thriving no-frills segment, Prestwick has continued its traditional strategic role as a refuelling point for military aircraft – the USAF, RAF and the Canadian Forces Air Command are frequent visitors for example. Cargo traffic has also become another stronghold of Prestwick with the vast majority of Scotland's Boeing 747 Freighter traffic entering via the airport. On the 5th of September 2009 the A380 approached and took off from the airport
The airport is privately owned by Infratil, a New Zealand investment company which also owns Wellington International Airport and Kent International Airport at Manston Ramsgate. In April 2005, Infratil completed a major £3 million refurbishment of the terminal building, and also controversially rebranded the airport using the phrase "Pure Dead Brilliant", taken straight from the Glasgow patter. Some of this rebranding has been controversial, in particular the redecoration of the airport bar. The bar was rebranded in February 2006 with a logo depicting a man in a kilt, unconscious with an empty bottle of whisky. Despite objections that it promoted the wrong image of Scotland to foreign visitors and embarrassed local travellers, the airport management insisted the logo was "fun and visually stimulating". However, the logo was removed on March 3, 2006, a matter of weeks after its introduction, after the intervention of the South Ayrshire Licensing Board who said the logo trivialised excessive drinking.
On 6 July 2005, Prestwick Airport became the entry point into Scotland for the world's most powerful leaders on the eve of the 31st G8 summit which was being held in Gleneagles. Strathclyde Police implemented an unprecedented level of security around the airport for the duration of the summit. Officers from police forces throughout the UK were drafted in to assist in the operation, including armed officers. In preparation for the landing of Air Force One, carrying then US president George W. Bush, the A77 which runs past the end of the main runway, was controversially closed while the aircraft was on final approach.
Since 2007 the airport has occasionally been used by BBC motoring TV show Top Gear as the location for various stunts and experiments. The most well known of which was inspired by a scene in the movie Casino Royale and featured both a Ford Mondeo and a Citroën 2CV parked behind the engines of a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400, in an experiment to investigate if the thrust from the aircraft four jet engines really could lift a car off the ground.