Willie Poole stretches to his left to answer the insistent tones of the telephone for the third time in five minutes. The interruptions pepper the short interview with him for this article, and he has to leave shortly for another pressing engagement on behalf of Glasgow Prestwick International Airport.

Still, he takes time to listen to the callers, and deal with their problems. Calmly, unhurried. The last call was from the father of three young children who will be flying abroad this summer for the first time. They are nervous about flying.

He opens his diary and arranges a time and date for the entire family to meet him at the airport. They'll be taken on board an aeroplane, probably Ryanair, to look around, talk to the pilot and be reassured, with a little Irish and a little Poole blarney thrown in for good measure. Usually that does the trick.

''We take a wee bit of time and tell people how it all works,'' he explains. ''People appreciate it. I get cards from Australia and elsewhere in the world with the message: 'Made it Willie, see you soon.' It's nice.''

Willie has time for people. It's genuine warmth, not the kind of phoney courtesy so transparent and so common nowadays, and it seems to be a feature of the Prestwick staff's dealings with their customers. ''We are like a family here, and we hope never to lose that. We have the time to treat passengers like people, not numbers.''

An unpressurised natural friendliness is the added ingredient to the good business sense which has taken Prestwick from the brink of closure in 1992 - when a consortium of Scots bought control from British Airports Authority - to the modern and still developing success story it represents today.

The man from Drongan has been virtually a permanent fixture in the airport's story for the past 32 years. He has seen the dark days, with fears of closure and job losses, and he has played a part in delivering the most success Prestwick has ever enjoyed.

In between, he's had a fascinating career.

He was an engineering union shop stewards convener during the BAA days, but when the new owners took over he was recruited to help on the business side because there were so few people left who knew the running of the airport. Staff numbers were down to 51. Since then, he's been manager or general manager of almost every department in the airport. He's 58 now, and his title is Liason Officer. The job fits him like a glove.

The airport is one of his great passions in life. He rattles off the statistics which underline its resurrection. It now supports nearly 400 jobs directly - and many more indirectly.

It had no passengers services in 1992. Now 650,000 people fly to and from Prestwick - 35 minutes from Glasgow by car and 40 minutes by train to its own dedicated railway station - using scheduled air links to London Stansted, Dublin and Belfast as well as its range of holiday charter services.

The freight business has enjoyed rapid expansion, from 12,000 tonnes a year to 52,000 last year. A new #8m freight and logistics hub is being built to accommodate expected growth to a figure in excess of 100,000 tonnes in the medium to long term.

Willie Poole wishes he was 10 years younger. ''There is a tremendous optimism here, and I reckon over the next 10 years this place will really take off,'' he adds.

Glowing testament to that is found in the letters, and the positive survey responses, from people who have enjoyed the Prestwick Experience.