Allowing Loganair to fail would be THE most Thatcherite action Nippy has ever done.
“No wider commercial benefit”
”Survival of the fittest”
”Open to any competitor”
The Hell she’d get would be political dynamite and not worth it. This is a government that still keeps the Terminal at PIK open even though it’s high costs harm the wider business.
There’s not a lot of choice for HIAL if you want a reliable, frequent service, the incumbent wins hands down. The wider economic impact might suggest the jets would have to go anyway, but core Loganair have been around since the 1960s, no one is better at doing the job they do. Ask Flybe.
The whole ethos in the UK is public-private partnership, no one will be building a government owned Scottish airline. They do not want one on the balance sheet, that’s not going to happen, that’s a very 1970s idea and is open to much higher costs and inefficiency, as well as empire building and waste. Loganair fly old jets and ATRs, the government would be going for new builds, just like Aurigny has done for the THIRD iteration of new ATRs. For the price of saving Loganair for future commercial trading, that’s small change by comparison.