90th anniversary of Highland airway pioneer's first flight from Inverness
The first flight of Highland Airways took off from the former Longman Airfield in Inverness on May 8, 1933, bound for Kirkwall in Orkney, with Captain Ernest Edmund Fresson at the controls. That journey heralded the beginning of 90 years of air travel from the Highland capital.
Thirty years after American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright invented and built the world's first successful aeroplane, making the first controlled, powered and sustained human flight on December 17, 1903, air travel was taking off in the Highlands.
The first practical fixed-wing aircraft, developed from the Wright brothers' flying machine, came into operation in 1905 and demand rapidly became global.
Flying reached the Highlands in 1912 but it was to be another 21 years before Captain Ernest Edmund Fresson would take off from Longman Airfield, Inverness, in a General Aircraft Monospar bound for Kirkwall for the inaugural flight of Highland Airways.
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This heralded the beginning of air services and the associated investment in air travel throughout the region.
Captain Fresson. known as Ted, gained an OBE for his development of the industry across the region.
There is a statue of him at Inverness Airport.
He opened the first airports at Wick, Kirkwall, Aberdeen, Sumburgh and Stornoway as well as those on the outer islands in the Orkneys. He founded the Scottish air ambulance services in the north, usually flying the most dangerous missions himself in all weathers, day or night. His ability to fly in any weather helped his airline gain the first UK domestic airmail contract in May 1934.
One year later the company was taken over, in combination with Glasgow-based Northern and Scottish Airways (NSA), by United Airways based in London and Blackpool as part of a move by aircraft company Whitehall Securities to create a large new domestic airline called Scottish Airways – run from Renfrew – which invested new capital and allowed both to keep their names.
In May 1937, business negotiations led to a combined ownership of Highland Airways and NSA by majority shareholders British Airways, which had already taken over United Airways, the LMS Railway Company and the David MacBrayne transport organisation.
Captain Fresson is reported to have said afterwards: "The amalgamation brought powerful backing, but we lost a lot of our independence."
During its first four years, Highland Airways carried over 18,000 passengers and continued throughout the war years.
Captain Fresson left in March 1948 after the post-war nationalisation of all domestic air services into British European Airways a year earlier. He received no compensation for the airline he helped build up and died in Inverness on September 25, 1963.
The initial idea behind the Fresson Trust an aviation charity started in 1991 – was to commission a bronze statue of the pilot, which now stands proudly at Inverness Airport. It was unveiled on September 25, 1991, the anniversary of his death and commemorated the centenary year of his birth in 1891.
Captain Fresson's vision and determination saw Highland Airways establish commercial and mail flights to and from Inverness, Orkney, Wick, Shetland, Aberdeen, Perth and Glasgow. Another first attributed to him was the tarmac runway at Stornoway, which is acknowledged as the first of its kind in Great Britain.
Highland Airways was re-established in 1997 from Air Alba and acted as a commercial, freight, reconnaissance and passenger airline, based at Inverness Airport – also delivering mail and newspapers to the northern and Western Isles – before it stopped trading in March 2010.
