Scotland has always been a challenging country to travel in; its terrain, areas of remoteness and changeable weather make it a daunting prospect when off the beaten track. This is as true by air as much as by any other means and it wasn’t until well into the 1930s, following the first exploratory flights of a handful of pioneering pilots in the decade before WWII, that regular air travel was possible in the more remote areas of the country.
It is very telling that Charles Lindbergh, flying the famous ‘Sprit of St. Louis’, had flown across the Atlantic, solo, before there was a scheduled service from mainland Scotland to the Orkney islands, just a short hop across the narrow but often stormy Pentland Firth.
Opening up these remote islands and other places in the far reaches of Scotland changed the lives of the people living in the communities there for good and connected them to the rest of the world, providing not only regular passenger flights, but also bringing mail and goods that had previously taken days to arrive, as well as the first Air Ambulance services that continue to this day.
Now almost forgotten in popular memory, the first exploratory flights were carried out by men from a bygone age when flying was still a novelty. The period between the two World Wars to which these men belong was a time when the general public was fascinated and thrilled by the invention and application of the aeroplane. Great flying displays were held all over the country and the record-breaking long distance and racing pilots of the 1920s and 1930s were world-famous. Names like Amy Johnson, Francis Chichester, Alan Cobham, Alex Henshaw and most famous of all, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, still resonate even now, almost one hundred years later in some cases. The reasons why have as much to do with the romance and glamour associated with air travel at the time, as they do to their achievements in opening up the air routes to South Africa, Australia and across the Atlantic.
In the thirties, we faced a new, faster pace of life in what became the streamlined ‘Art Deco’ years of world travel. By the close of that decade, the great, leviathan like airliners of British Imperial Airways offered passage to South Africa and beyond in a matter of days; a fraction of the time taken by the traditional steam liners, with twice the glamour and in nearly as much luxury. It was the pioneering efforts of the first long distance flyers in their delicate open cockpit aeroplanes that had made this possible.
While the high-profile and glamour of the famous aviators did much to widen the appeal and backing of aviation in general, it is thanks to more unsung heroes, quietly working away to connect the difficult corners of the world with reliable and regular air services, that air travel became an established and in the end, unremarkable way of getting around and a common method of delivering goods and mail.
They achieved this despite the ever-present hindrance and danger of foul weather conditions, a lack of obvious landing grounds and without the help of our modern forecasting tools or radio and satellite based navigation aids. It is difficult to imagine now, as we board a modern, air conditioned, commuter aircraft on a flight to anywhere in the world, that at one time flying at all, represented in the truest sense of the word, adventure: a difficult and hazardous undertaking.
To be able to take an aircraft across the hostile stretches of water and mountain that had for centuries presented natural barriers to communication, was a considerable feat at the time and worthy of the headlines. To take this one step further and carry passengers safely and reliably, day in, day out, in all weathers, was an incredible achievement.
One of the most renowned pilots of the time and the founder of Highland Airways, Ted Fresson, remarks in his autobiography that ‘it was the bad weather days that took a heavy toll on me.’
We take air travel for granted today and flight is not the miracle or even marvel that it once was; indeed, it has become something of a necessary evil, something to endure in order to get to where we are going and even a villain in the fight against Climate Change.
Imagine, though, for a moment, a world without flight, a world much more limiting and physically isolating. Without it, we would be lost and flight itself has helped our collective imaginations soar – has shown what is possible if we put our minds to it; from a 100ft hop at Kittyhawk by the Wright Brothers in 1903, through the invention of the laminar flow wing in the late 1930s, the Jet engine and the breaking of the sound barrier in the late 1940’s, to a permanent, international space station floating above earth in just one hundred years, never mind the moon landings.
Flight reveals our innermost desires, for who hasn’t at some point, literally dreamt
of flying? It is through the efforts of the early aviators, across all corners of this diverse globe, that have made that dream a reality in the modern world and without them, our dreams may have still been just that.
As the pilot of a somewhat basic and limited machine, based in this particular little corner of the world, I can empathise with some of the difficulties those pilots faced and in the pages under this header, you will be able to read about some of the most notable pilots and their exploits as they strove to connect Scotland’s remotest corners.
The archive will be updated on an ongoing basis.
The Auster Diaries 