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Loganair

IATA ICAO Callsign LM[1] LOG LOGAN
Founded	1962
AOC #	2105
Hubs	Glasgow Airport
Secondary hubs	Aberdeen Airport Edinburgh Airport Inverness Airport Kirkwall Airport
Focus cities	Kirkwall Airport Manchester Airport Norwich Airport Stornoway Airport Sumburgh Airport
Frequent-flyer program	Clan Loganair[2]
Fleet size	30
Destinations	27
Company slogan	Scotland's Airline
Parent company	Airline Investments Limited (AIL)
Headquarters	Cirrus Building 9 Marchburn Drive Glasgow Airport Paisley PA3 2SJ[3]
Website	www.loganair.co.uk

Loganair Limited is a Scottish regional airline founded in 1962, with its registered office on the grounds of Glasgow Airport in Paisley, Renfrewshire.^[4] Its tag line is Scotland's Airline.

Loganair provides services for the night mail flights on behalf of Royal Mail. In addition to its main base at Glasgow, the airline has hubs at Edinburgh Airport, Inverness Airport, Dundee Airport and Aberdeen Airport.^[5] The company holds a United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority Type A Operating Licence. It is permitted to carry passengers, cargo and mail on aircraft with 20 or more seats.^[6]

History

Early years

Loganair Britten-Norman Islander in 1967

Loganair Saab 340B in its former British Airways livery

Loganair was established on 1 February 1962 by Willie Logan of the Logan Construction Company Ltd, operating as its air charter arm^[7] with a Piper PA-23 Aztec based at Edinburgh.^[8]

In 1967 Loganair took delivery of three Britten-Norman Islander twin-engine eight-seat light commuter airliners and began regular flights between the Orkney Islands,^[9] and started operating in Shetland in 1970.^[8] In 1966, after Renfrew Airport closed, the airline established its head office at Glasgow Airport.^[10][11] This aspect of Loganair's operations ceased on 31 March 2006 when the new contract for air ambulance work was awarded to Gama Aviation.

Between 1968 and 1983 the company was owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland,^[8] Towards the end of this period, Loganair bought Short 360 and Fokker F27 Friendship aircraft.^[8] The company brought jet aircraft into the fleet with two British Aerospace 146s. In December 1983 it became a subsidiary of the Airlines of Britain Group. Further aircraft were added to the fleet: British Aerospace Jetstream 31, British Aerospace Jetstream 41, and British Aerospace ATP aircraft. In the late 1980s Loganair was the fastest growing scheduled operator at Manchester Airport, and, in terms of number of flights, was the airport's second busiest carrier.^[12]

In 1993 the airline became a franchisee of British Airways, operating its Islanders in the British Airways livery. This would stand until July 2008 when it became the new franchisee of Flybe.^[13]

After a restructure of British Midland Group in 1994, Loganair's routes outside Scotland and the aircraft used operate them were transferred to Manx Airlines. This consolidation of services led to the formation of a new airline, British Regional Airline (BRA Ltd). In 1997, with Loganair now consisting of six aircraft (one de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter and five Britten Norman Islanders) and 44 staff, a management buy-out occurred.^[14]

Operations as Flybe franchisee

In June 2005, Loganair was awarded a contract from the Irish Government to operate a daily return service from Knock, County Mayo to Dublin. This public service obligation (PSO) route operated for a period of three years as British Airways, with effect from 22 July 2005. The operation ceased in July 2008, the contract having been lost to Aer Arann. The airline also bought routes from Citiexpress in March 2004.^[7] It flew BA's British Aerospace ATPs on these routes until May 2005, when further Saab 340 aircraft were purchased to replace them.^{[citation needed]}

Until October 2008 Loganair was a British Airways franchisee, operating flights sold through BA using BA flight codes. Loganair's inter-island operations between the Orkney and Shetland Islands carried out using Britten-Norman Islanders was removed from the franchise agreement in 2004. The flights have since been marketed under Loganair's own name, rather than British Airways'. Loganair became a franchise airline of Flybe, operating in the Flybe colours.^[15][16] Flights are also operated under a codeshare agreement with British Airways connecting flights from Scotland to London. The franchise has been criticised by residents in the Scottish islands for what they perceive to be excessively high fares,^[17][18] and a Facebook campaign set up in June 2015 to highlight the issue attracted over 7400 "likes" over the course of its first weekend.^[19]

On 8 July 2011, it was announced that Loganair had agreed to purchase Cambridge based ScotAirways. ScotAirways continued to trade as a separate entity (using its original name of Suckling Airways) and holding its own licences and approvals until April 2013.^[20][21]

In anticipation of the end of operations on behalf of Flybe, in April 2017 Loganair unveiled its independent corporate livery on this Saab 340 at Manchester Airport.

Services to Belfast and to Birmingham from Dundee ended on 2 December 2012.^[22] After CityJet had terminated its services between Dundee and London City Airport in January 2014, Loganair took over the route, operating from Dundee to London Stansted Airport, with the support of a PSO agreement.^[23]

In May 2015 two Viking Air DHC-6-400 Twin Otter aircraft were acquired by Highlands and Islands Airports to be operated by Loganair on the Scottish Government's Public Service Obligation routes between Glasgow and Campbeltown, Tiree and Barra.^[24] In August 2015 the airline became part of a new regional airline group, Airline Investments Limited (AIL),^[25] along with East Midlands-based airline bmi regional^[26]

On 21 November 2016, Flybe and Loganair announced that their franchise agreement would terminate on 31 August 2017. Despite headlines, it is unclear who initiated the termination.^[27] Loganair later relaunched its website without renewed interline agreements with Flybe or Aer Lingus.^[28]

In April 2017, pending the termination of the Flybe franchise agreement, Loganair unveiled its new independent corporate livery on Saab 340B Freighter G-LGNN. From 1 September the airline began operating "in its own right" for the first time in 24 years.^[29]

Loganair signed a codeshare agreement with British Airways (BA), effective from 1 September 2017 (coinciding with the launch of independent operations), allowing passengers to book through flights onto BA's global network.^[30][31]

Destinations

As of November 2016^[update], Loganair serves 28 destinations in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands, the Republic of Ireland and Norway.^[32] Part of Loganair's operations includes the world's shortest scheduled commercial route, between Westray Airport and Papa Westray Airport, a distance of 1.7 miles,^[33] and the use of Barra Airport, the only airport in the world to use a beach as a runway.

Fleet

Loganair Saab 340

Loganair Britten-Norman Islander in snow at Fair Isle

Loganair Viking Air DHC-6-400 Twin Otter at Glasgow Airport

Loganair Dornier 328 G-BWIR

As of December 2018^[update] the Loganair fleet consists of the following aircraft:^[34]

Embraer ERJ-145 were previously operated by Flybmi on behalf of Loganair on the Inverness to Bergen, Dublin and Manchester routes before the airline acquired their first ERJ-135 in November 2018.

In June 2018, it was announced that Loganair plan to add at least a further two Embraer ERJ-145 aircraft for the start of the Summer 2019 schedule. The aircraft are to be transferred to Loganair from its sister company Flybmi and will initially be used to operate flights from Loganair's Glasgow base to Derry and Stornoway.

Loganair plan to eventually use the Embraer ERJ-145 aircraft to launch new routes to European airports that are currently not served from Glasgow.^[39]

Loganair is planning to introduce electric aircraft to the Orkney Islands by 2021 due to the short distance between the islands that would make such flights possible.^[40]

In November 2018, it was announced that around twenty ATR 42 aircraft would be phased into its fleet to replace the Saab 2000 and Saab 340 aircraft in the third quarter of 2019. ^[41]

Accidents and incidents

• On 12 June 1986, a DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft with 16 people on board^[42] struck high ground on the island of Islay in poor weather. The pilots had mistakenly identified the coastal village of Laphroaig as the town of Port Ellen, near Islay's Glenegedale Airport. There was one fatality, a pilot.^[43]
  


• In 1996, a Britten-Norman Islander was destroyed in Shetland. The accident occurred during a night time return flight to the aircraft's home base following a medical evacuation flight. The aircraft crashed short of the runway whilst attempting to land after a previous discontinued approach in strong gusting cross winds. The pilot had exercised his discretion to extend the period for which he was allowed to fly that day. The pilot's medical certificate had expired nineteen days earlier thus invalidating his pilot's licence. The pilot was killed in the crash and a doctor on board was seriously injured; a nurse seated at the rear of the aircraft sustained minor injuries.^[11][44]
  


• On 27 February 2001, Flight 670 a Short 360 registered G-BNMT operating a Royal Mail flight to Belfast, crashed into the Firth of Forth shortly after taking off from Edinburgh at 1730GMT. Both crew members were killed, but there were no passengers on board. An Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) inquiry later blamed a buildup of slush in the aircraft's engines for the crash. Protective covers had not been fitted to the engine intakes while the aircraft was parked for several hours in heavy snow at Edinburgh.^[45][46]
  


• On 15 March 2005, a Britten-Norman Islander crashed into the sea while descending toward Campbeltown Airport in western Scotland. The aircraft was operating on an unscheduled air ambulance flight. Both occupants, the pilot and one passenger (a paramedic with the Scottish Ambulance Service), died in the crash.^[11][47] As a result of this accident, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) accepted Safety Recommendation UNKG-2006-101 from the UK's accident investigation report, which the European Commission adopted into regulation, making passenger shoulder harnesses mandatory on all commercial air transport aircraft weighing less than 5,700 kg (12,500 lbs) and having fewer than nine passenger seats.^{[48](p67)[49](p103)[50](p88)[51]}
  

References

Citations

Bibliography

• Iain Hutchison, The Story of Loganair (1987)
  ISBN 978-0-906437-14-8 Western Isles Publishing


• Roy Calderwood, Times subject to Tides: the story of Barra Airport (1999)
  ISBN 978-0-9518958-3-2
  


• Iain Hutchison, Air Ambulance: sixty years of the Scottish Air Ambulance Service (1996)
  ISBN 978-0-9518958-2-5
  


• Tony Merton-Jones, British Independent Airlines 1946-1976 (2000) The Aviation Hobby Shop, West Drayton, Middlesex.
  ISBN 0-907178-82-0
  


• Guy Warner, Orkney by Air (2005)
  ISBN 978-0-9518958-7-0
  


• Captain Alan Whitfield, Island Pilot (2007)
  ISBN 978-0-9518958-8-7
  

External links

Media related to Loganair at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website