Scottish Virgin: Highland Express

7/1/2016

Scotland has never had a successful national airline (except I guess Loganair), although several carriers have traded on a Scottish heritage including Caledonian (later BCal) and more recently the quasi-airline Air Scotland. During the 1980s another bold attempt to fly long-haul from Scotland was attempted with Highland Express, however, though its 747 looked stunning, it was a short-lived air bridge.

Highland Express Boeing 747-123 G-HIHO - Aeroclassics 1:400 Scale

Highland Express was the brainchild of Randolph Fields, who was at the time a 31 year old barrister. He owned a paper airline named British Atlantic which had applied to fly a dormant ex-Laker route from London Gatwick to Newark. Fields had done a feasibility study but did not have money to purchase aircraft so approached Richard Branson's Virgin Group. Virgin at the time had no interest or expertise in the airline market but Branson was attracted to the opportunity and he and Fields became business partners.

Left: Randolph Fields

Fields originally planned an all business class carrier but Branson was more interested in a low cost enterprise. Though the 1984 agreement between the pair had Fields running the airline on a day to day basis Branson lost confidence in him and the pair split in September 1984 with Fields receiving GBP125,000 in compensation. Fields' remaining GBP1 million in shares were bought out in 1985 and he also received unlimited free travel on Virgin.

Fields now went his own way and created Highland Express to operate transatlantic services with a Scottish flavour from Prestwick, Birmingham and London Stansted to Newark. The airline's callsign was TARTAN, however all its services would start in England, routing via the Scottish long-haul hub at Prestwick.

Gary Watt (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

The first service was to be flown on May 30, 1987, the day of the Scottish International Airshow at Prestwick but, the Newark and Toronto service was delayed as the license to operate to Toronto was not forthcoming. Worse a deal to lease a 747 from GATX collapsed and the replacement aircraft leased from Citicorp was delivered weeks late. Operations finally began on June 30 as VY201 routing Stansted-Prestwick-Newark, although this service used a leased Caribbean Airways 747 rather than the intended Citicorp aircraft. Birmingham services followed on July 4 as VY211 using the 'new' 747 G-HIHO for the first time. With only a single aircraft the route frequencies were limited to a single daily flight (4 from Stansted and 3 from Birmingham). The 747 was maintained at SABENA's Brussels facility and so routed their on Monday, returning to service on Tuesday.

Timetable images from the collections of Bjorn Larsson and David Zekria at timetableimages.com

G-HIHO was named 'Highlander'. She had been delivered to American Airlines in October 1970 as N9669. American sold her to Citicorp in May 1984 and by July she was operating with one of the reincarnations of National Airlines. Returned to Citicorp in September 1985 she was stored and registered N14939. Though painted for a lease to Cargolux this didn't eventuate and the poor condition of the frame was what resulted in her delay arriving at Highland Express.

The flights were not a success and debts began to mount very quickly. Due to the multi-stop nature of the flights the domestic leg was often half empty and these seats were sold from GBP10 each. On occasions a chartered London European BAC One-Eleven was used for the domestic leg of the journey. A Gatwick-Prestwick-Newark route began in November but only 3 weeks later SABENA repossessed the aircraft in Brussels leading to the carrier's collapse. Highland Express had flown for only four months.

Gary Watt (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2 ), via Wikimedia Commons

It is hard to see what Fields was trying to achieve with such a niche product, however the limited funding and single aircraft didn't help. The UK's CAA had seen the airline as being undercapitilised prior to the start of operations and the early equipment shortage seriously impacted credibility and advance ticket sales. The legal necessity of using Prestwick as the Scottish gateway was also unhelpful. The airline collapsed with debts of GBP8.4 million including the trading loss of GBP6 million accrued between March 31, 1987 and December 11.

Ken Fielding/https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenfielding, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Fields himself also connected the airline's failure with the world's stockmarket crash on 'Black Monday' which resulted in expected funding not being forthcoming. He was upbeat about the airline's prospects as he claimed that the carrier had been solvent since the end of November, had a 70% load factor and solid Christmas bookings. Despite this Highland Express simply couldn't pay its bills and Fields decided to step back from running the carrier. Sadly plans to resurrect the airline with a new managing director and charter flights in January 1988 followed by scheduled services in March were not successful.

Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

G-HIHO was returned to Citicorp in January 1988. She was leased to Qantas but repainted into Air Pacific colours as VH-EEI in March. The aircraft was named 'Island of Viti Levu' and served until November 1989. She operated with Qantas briefly after confusingly being leased to Aer Lingus as EI-CAI who sub-leased her back to QF. She returned back to the United Kingdom in 1990 when she joined Virgin as G-VMIA 'Miami Maiden'. Virgin bought her outright in 1993 and she became 'Spirit of Sir Freddie'. She served a decade with Virgin until retirement in January 2000. She had flown 84,293 hours and 18,397 cycles at the time of her scrapping in March 2000. I wonder if Fields ever flew free with Virgin on this frame and wondered what might have been?

References

Aussie Airliners - B747 VH-EEI
1988, January. Flight International. Highland looks for rescue
Everything explained: Highland Express
2005. PPRuNe Highland Express

4 Comments

BWI-ROCman

6/1/2016 03:14:13 pm

Sounds like a strange business plan. I know there were some 747 services to Scotland--Northwest and Pan Am come to mind--but those were part of longer routings by bigger carriers from places with larger populations. But I have the impression a 747 is too much airplane for Scotland on TATL. In the late 80's, 767's might have been too expensive because they were so new. But it's hard to imagine such an airline succeeding with anything bigger.

Jim

Errol Alexanderrr

12/3/2016 12:55:31 pm

I WAS A MBA student at Stratclyde Business School in Glasgow when a major marketing presentation on Highlight Express was given by Randolph Fields in addition to several hundred graduate students the audience included governmental officials,newspapers and TV stations to cover the event. For more than a hour. The lecture theatre with a huge screen was filled with power points colorful projections how the airline from Scotland to New York City was going to be so profitable.

I was Ft MBA class chairman a
And an American my job was to ask.the last question or just thank the speaker for coming to Stratclyde. I opted to offer thanks and was about to resume my seat when Mr. Fields asked me what did I think of the Strategy. I swallowed my breathe and said...nor much it did not account for reaction by competiors. Pricing strategy was too flawed. There was silence in the room and a marketing professor red faced who could barely hold his temper yelled at me..We should ignore the comments of a student,especially one from the United States.
I heard some profane..as who in the bloody world does he think he is....Exiting out of the lecture theatre.someone hit me in my back and I heard some curse words. A bout two weeks later an inaugural flight was made and where I normally seat in the classroom was a bunch of newspapers all indicating how great the flight was and all the dignitaries aboard. Three years later I am at University of Glasgow doing a PhD attending a large conference of business leaders and FIELDS was the keynote speaker. He gave a brilliant speech and said he would take questions. Then the dinner chairman said the last question would be from Errol Alexander. I was shocked as I had not raise my hand.
Fields said...Ladies and gentlemen if I Had listened to this young man I would be millions richer..he was the only one who told what a team of professors and a feasibility study costing me 50,00 pounds did not. The room erupted in long applause and I left that conference with two large consulting contracts.

RStretton

12/3/2016 06:46:28 pm

That is a wonderful anecdoe - thanks for posting.

Mrs Valerie F Bannerman

22/5/2024 09:04:05 pm

I and my 2 young children were victims of Highland Express Airlines. We attended the Prestwick Airport open day in 1987 and I was impressed with their presentation. I booked what I was told was the inaugural flight to Stanstead and that there would be treats for the children and inflight entertainment. This was to be an affordable visit to my parents. I paid for the tickets but 3 weeks later no tickets had arrived. My husband had the day off so we went to Prestwick Airport. We were shown upstairs into what could only be called a stage production. There were ply wood walls supported by wooden strapping and a ply wood door to enter. There were staff dressed in tartan looking busy but really doing nothing. We sat for some time before anyone attended to us. The person apologised for what had happened and said my money would be refunded. When I said I still wanted to take the flight I was assured that i would get my tickets which I did at no cost to me. What really worried me was aboard behind the desk which proclaimed 'We can only fail if we succeed'. We arrived at the airport in good time to be told that the flight was delayed so I took the children to the cafe for drinks and snacks. We eventually took off an hour and a half late and were told that the inaugural flight had actually taken place the day before so there was no inflight entertainment for the children. The return flight was even more of a nightmare. We arrived well on time to book in to be told that the flight had been delayed and would not be leaving before 1 pm. We were told to go to the cafe and the 3 of us were given a food voucher for 35p each - not a lot even in 1987. We were called for our flight at about midday. We then sat in the aircraft for over two and a half hours with very little information and in stifling heat. The stewardesses came round with children's magazines which my two had had the week before and Highland Express badges that they already had. A young boy asked for pack of cards which they could not provide and a poor baby cried because of the heat. Eventually the captain told us that the plane needed a part which was coming from Sweden and the airline was refusing to pay the excise. Eventually there must have been some agreement because we took off. My neighbour was going to pick us up from the airport and was having to phone my husband to say there was no sign of us. My parents were still at Stanstead seeing our plane still on the runway and, because no one would give them any information, thought we had .been hijacked . Once in flight we were offered drinks and apologies but several people missed their connections and my husband, my parents and my neighbour were put into distress and worry because of what happened. I know I eventually got free travel for myself and children but I did not ask for it and I am certain that if I knew the worry and anxiety my family and friends went through I would never have accepted it.

Scottish Virgin: Highland Express

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