East Midlands - Edinburgh - Aberdeen over the years
Does anyone remember Inter City?
They were around in the early / mid 1980s and flew a SD3-30 every morning from East Midlands to Edinburgh and then onto Aberdeen, where the aircraft would day stop prior to returning to East Midlands in the evening.
Following the airline’s collapse, the route was taken over by Air Ecosse, who maintained the schedule, albeit upgrading it eventually to a 360. As well as the East Midlands service, they also had an Aberdeen – Prestwick – Belfast flight which, I think, connected with the Northwest Orient flights to Boston from Prestwick and was operated by Bandeirante and a rather spectacular Dundee – Carlisle – Heathrow service which was a twice daily 360 operation. It must have been quite a journey all the way from Scotland to Heathrow in the shoebox!
After a couple of years on the East Midlands route it was extended to include Wick, making EMA one of the few English airports to ever have a service that far north. And a Cessna Titan was also used for a service which originated in Aberdeen and daystopped at East Midlands. Although it was an Air Ecosse service, it was operated on their behalf by someone else - was it Hawk Aviation (who also did some crew flights for Orion)?
I'n not sure what happened next regarding the links between the airlines operating the routes, but following Air Ecosse’s demise, Peregrine took over the service, using Gulfstream 1s, and eventually upgrading, as others have noted, to the 748. Then as others have said, Aberdeen Airways took over but they didn’t last long.
Once Aberdeen had failed, Business Air took over, using the Saab 340. And eventually they ended up operating a Saab exclusively for British Midland (to Brussels?) and the rest as they say is history.
Everytime I see a BMI Baby 737 en route to Edinburgh I often think of the airlines that have plied the route in the past, and how many more passengers they must be carrying compared to the trusty old Shorts!