Loganair
Loganair is a regional airline based at Glasgow Airport near Paisley, Scotland.
In addition to its main base at Glasgow, the airline has hubs at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Inverness and Newcastle airports. 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.
History
Early years
Loganair was established on 1 February 1962 by Willie Logan of the Logan Construction Company Ltd, operating as its air charter arm with a Piper PA-23 Aztec based at Edinburgh.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, and started operating in Shetland in 1970. In 1966, after Renfrew Airport closed, the airline established its head office at Glasgow Airport. 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, Towards the end of this period, Loganair bought Short 360 and Fokker F27 Friendship aircraft. 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.
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.
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. In 1997, with Loganair now consisting of six aircraft and 44 staff, a management buy-out occurred.
Operations as Flybe franchisee and later developments
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 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.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. 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, and a Facebook campaign set up in June 2015 to highlight the issue attracted over 7400 "likes" over the course of its first weekend.
On 8 July 2011, it was announced that Loganair had agreed to purchase Cambridge based ScotAirways. ScotAirways continued to trade as a separate entity and holding its own licences and approvals until April 2013.
Services to Belfast and to Birmingham from Dundee ended on 2 December 2012. 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.
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. In August 2015 the airline became part of a new regional airline group, Airline Investments Limited, along with East Midlands-based airline bmi regional.
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. Loganair later relaunched its website without renewed interline agreements with Flybe or Aer Lingus.
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. Loganair signed a codeshare agreement with British Airways, effective from 1 September 2017, allowing passengers to book through flights onto BA's global network.
Reactions to the demise of other airlines
In February 2019, following Flybmi's cessation of operations, Loganair announced that it was to take over Flybmi's routes from Aberdeen to Bristol, Oslo and Esbjerg, from Newcastle to Stavanger and Brussels, and from City of Derry Airport to London-Stansted.In March 2020, following Flybe's cessation of operations, Loganair announced that it was to take over the following Flybe routes from Scotland and Newcastle: Aberdeen-Belfast City; Aberdeen-Birmingham; Aberdeen-Jersey; Aberdeen-Manchester; Edinburgh-Cardiff; Edinburgh-Exeter; Edinburgh-Manchester; Edinburgh-Newquay; Edinburgh-Southampton; Glasgow-Exeter; Glasgow-Southampton; Inverness-Belfast City; Inverness-Birmingham; Inverness-Jersey; Newcastle-Exeter; Newcastle-Southampton
Destinations
, Loganair serves 44 destinations in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Republic of Ireland and Europe. 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, and the use of Barra Airport, the only airport in the world to use a beach as a runway.With the collapse of airline Flybe in March 2020, Loganair took over a number of former Flybe routes from Scotland and the North of England, with service beginning as little as 10 days after the collapse of Flybe.
Codeshare agreements
Loganair has codeshare agreements with the following airlines :- Blue Islands
- British Airways
- KLM
Interline agreements
Loganair is also a partner airline in the "Worldwide by easyJet" scheme
Fleet
Current fleet
, the Loganair fleet consists of the following aircraft:Fleet development
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.Embraer ERJ-145s 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. Also 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.
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.
Loganair has continued to follow its fleet simplification programme through 2019 by phasing out the small subfleets of Dornier 328 and Saab 2000s to focus on the Saab 340 and Embraer ERJ families in the near term before the gradual phase in of the ATR 42 fleet. By April 2019, the D328 fleet had already been Withdrawn From Use and stored.
Loganair returned the last of their Saab 2000 aircraft to the lessor on 25 March 2020
Former Fleet
| Aircraft | Introduced | Retired | Notes | Refs |
| Piper Aztec | 1962 | Unknown | ||
| Beechcraft Model 18 | 1968 | 1975 | One aircraft preserved at National Museum of Flight | |
| Short SC.7 Skyvan | 1969 | 1974 | ||
| Britten-Norman Trislander | 1973 | 1983 | Replaced by De Havilland Canada Twin Otter | |
| Short 330 | 1979 | 1984 | Replaced by Short 360 | |
| Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante | 1980 | Unknown | ||
| Fokker F27 Friendship | 1983 | 1988 | ||
| Short 360 | 1983 | 2004 | Replaced by Saab 340 | |
| British Aerospace 146 | 1989 | 1992 | ||
| BAe Jetstream 31 | 1991 | Unknown | ||
| British Aerospace ATP | 1991 | 2005 | ||
| BAe Jetstream 41 | 1993 | 1994 | ||
| Dornier 328 | 2013 | 2019 | Acquired from purchase of Suckling Airways | |
| Saab 2000 | 2014 | 2020 | Replaced by ATR 42/72 |
Accidents and incidents
- On 12 June 1986, a DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft with 16 people on board 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.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- 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, died in the crash. As a result of this accident, the European Aviation Safety Agency 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 and having fewer than nine passenger seats.
- On 16 June 2020, a former Flybe Bombardier Q400 made a low speed rear end ground collision with a stationary Loganair Embraer ERJ-145EP at Aberdeen Airport. There were no passengers on either plane and no reported injuries.
Citations