Highlands' businesses urged to get behind Gatwick fight
Businesses are to be invited to express the importance of air links between the Highlands and London in a bid to strengthen evidence to help retain the crucial service.
The Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI) is set to send out a survey to companies across the region, seeking feedback on Flybe’s flights between Inverness and Gatwick.
It comes days after the budget airline announced the sale of its Gatwick runway slots to Easyjet for £20 million.
Flybe operates three flights between Inverness and London Gatwick from Monday to Friday and two on Saturdays and Sundays. Flybe is set to continue to operate the flights until March next year, but it is unclear exactly how these might be affected after that.
Fraser Grieve, SCDI’s Highlands and Islands manager, is keen to help put forward a strong case for Easyjet to continue providing daily early morning and late evening flights which are particularly beneficial to business travellers.
He said: "Over the coming weeks and months we need to look at how we safeguard access into London for the long-term, whilst also working with Easyjet to see what we can do to make a positive business case for Inverness Airport and the whole of the Highlands to be part of their planning for the slots."
Inverness Airport’s biggest user, Easyjet, already operates daily flights from Inverness to Gatwick, as well as from Inverness to Luton.
It has stressed the company is committed to continuing to provide Inverness with links to London and will look at the routes currently served by Flybe before announcing the timetable for summer 2014 later this year.
Tomatin Distillery, located south of Inverness, is among businesses which use the service regularly, particularly with its export markets to more than 40 countries.
If Easyjet used the landing and departure slots for other domestic or international services, the distillery’s sales director Stephen Bremner predicted it would mean its seven executives who frequently use the flights would have to travel by road to other airports which would be both inconvenient and costly in terms of time and money.
He thought the current service helped further: "We encourage our customers to visit us at the distillery and being able to offer direct flights to Inverness is a great incentive.
"Asking them to fly to Glasgow or Edinburgh, sometimes with one or more previous connections, then drive for three hours just to see us is not."
Last week Mr Grieve hosted a crunch meeting where business and community leaders, including chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, joined forces to assess the situation.
Options are being explored for the UK government to step in to protect Inverness to Gatwick flights, including imposing a Public Service Obligation — a method used to protect 58 regional services in France — and whether it would be possible for the government to bring some landing slots at Gatwick into public ownership. Used by many European Union countries, PSOs enable scheduled air services to be maintained on routes vital for the economic development of a region.
The deal is subject to approval of Flybe’s shareholders, which is expected in July. It is part of the airline’s cost-cutting measures, under which 600 workers have been made redundant and pilots have agreed a 5 per cent pay cut, and it said serving Gatwick was no longer economically viable.
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