From today's Scotsman:
[quote]Inverness loses air link to London
John Ross
A NEW air service between Inverness and London, which was launched four months ago, is to be suspended indefinitely from this weekend because of poor passenger numbers and a lack of revenue.
Cambridge-based ScotAirways introduced new weekday and Sunday services from the Highland capital to London City airport on 10 September, with weekday flights between Inverness and Amsterdam Schipol.
The Amsterdam link was suspended indefinitely following the terrorist attacks in the US just 24 hours after the launch. The company announced yesterday the London service is also being mothballed, although it has not severed the link altogether.
Gerry Froggett, ScotAirways commercial manager, said: "We are suspending the Inverness-London City service from Sunday as a result of the trading conditions we are finding at the moment.
"Both the numbers we were carrying and the revenue we received per passenger was not at the levels we would have liked to have seen it at.
"It is an increasingly difficult time for airlines to launch new things and we launched the service on 10 September, so it did not have the greatest start date given what happened 24 hours later.
"Had it been normal times I am sure we would have seen Inverness-London City as being a great success. New routes are always a big drain on resources of airlines and in the current climate this is not a drain on resources which we can continue to sustain."
He said the situation will be kept under review. ScotAirways, which has the Stagecoach millionaires Brian Souter and Ann Gloag as shareholders, were using 31-seat aircraft on the flights which, it was hoped, would increase from once a day to up to four times a day.<hr></blockquote>