Loganair celebrates 50 years as 'Scotland's airline'

Scottish airline Loganair celebrated its 50th anniversary this week.

A Loganair pilot in a Flybe aircraft soars over the Tay Road Bridge.

By Andrew Argo
Published in the Courier : 02.02.12
Published online : 04.02.12 @ 11.51am

The Glasgow-based airline, which now operates scheduled services under the Flybe franchise in mainland Scotland and to Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles, and also to Belfast and Birmingham from Dundee, owes its existence to the Tay Road Bridge.

Willie Logan was managing director of Duncan Logan Ltd of Muir of Ord, which won the contract to build the crossing of the Tay estuary between Dundee and Fife. He used a Piper Aztec to fly managers and employees to the site from Edinburgh — opening his eyes to the potential of an airline.

In the 1960s it could take three hours to drive from Edinburgh to Dundee, but the distance could be flown in just 15 minutes.

Loganair began life on February 1 1962, operating a number of regular and special charter services using a fleet of light aircraft. The small airline carried out maildrops to St Kilda, aerial photography, flying Littlewoods Pools coupons from Belfast to Glasgow and onwards to Liverpool and flying Logan Construction executives to temporary airstrips all over Scotland.

The Tay Road Bridge was completed in August 1966 but Willie Logan did not live to see it — eight months earlier he died, aged 52, when his aircraft crashed near Inverness.

In October 1968 the airline was bought by the Royal Bank of Scotland, and three years later it was relaunched as a commercial airline operating scheduled services.

The first was in August 1971 between Dundee and Glasgow, with Loganair operating two daily flights in an eight-seat Brittan Norman Islander to Glasgow, connecting with services to London.

The 1971 timetable shows fares between Dundee and Glasgow were £4.40 one-way, with a 50% discount for children, and young persons' and student fares were available.

Once it became possible to drive to Edinburgh Airport in just over an hour and catch a greater range of more competitively-priced flights south, the viability of the Dundee service suffered.

Continued...