Skydrift Air Charter
ScotAirways commenced services in April 1986 as Suckling Airways, a regional airline based in eastern England, and named after founders Roy and Merlyn Suckling. Early airports served included Ipswich, Cambridge, Manchester and Amsterdam. Services were operated by a fleet of Dornier 228 aircraft, and the airline quickly became known for providing an on-time, reliable and friendly service to its customers, who were mainly business people from the local areas served by Suckling Airways.
The final ScotAirways Dornier 228 aircraft, G-BUXT, departs Amsterdam Schiphol for Cambridge, Friday 19th January 2000.
The first Dornier 328-100 aircraft, G-BWIR, joined fleet to commence services between London Luton & Paris Charles de Gaulle in October 1995.Throughout the 1990's, Suckling revised and expanded its operations, including establishment of a head office at Cambridge Airport, and new operating bases at Luton, Southampton, and Stansted, together with routes such as Cambridge/Amsterdam, London Luton/Paris CDG, London Stansted/Zurich and Southampton/Amsterdam. A major change however occurred in 1999, when a decision was taken to focus on London City Airport as the main operating hub, and then, in October 1999, to reflect the growing services to and from Scotland, a launch of a new brand, 'ScotAirways'.
Throughout many successful years of operations from London City Airport, ScotAirways won the timekeeping award for all London to Edinburgh air routes in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, was nominated as 'Best Domestic Airline' by both the Scottish Passenger Agents Association and 'Buying Business Travel' magazine and built a loyal customer base amongst the many corporate organisations in both London and Scotland who came to rely upon the services.
Further accolades were gained from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, where once again punctuality was rewarded with a number of awards, most recently in 2006 as the most on-time UK/Amsterdam airline.
As ScotAirways continued its development, the introduction of its first jet services in 2005 was a milestone, with British Aerospace 146-200 series aircraft being acquired to commence operations on the London City/Edinburgh service.
Jet services commenced between London City Airport and Edinburgh in May 2005.
ScotAirways Director Merlyn Suckling (right) cuts the 20th Anniversary cake at the Business Travel Show 2006 at Olympia with Steve Savage, former Director of Carlson Wagonlit Travel.In February 2007, the first step in what was to become a fundamental change to ScotAirways took place as an agreement was reached with Irish airline CityJet, to operate wet-lease services on their behalf as part of the new CityJet for Air France network being built at London City Airport. As such, in April 2007, services were launched between Belfast City Airport and London City Airport, with ScotAirways flying under Air France flight numbers, and providing the CityJet for Air France product to customers. As 2007 continued, the relationship between CityJet, Air France and ScotAirways developed to the point where in August 2007 it was announced that ScotAirways would fly its own existing services from London City Airport solely on behalf of CityJet for Air France.
ScotAirways is today a modern, diverse airline with a strategy focussed completely on providing aircraft solutions to a wide range of customers. Long-term ACMI and franchise operations are operated in the CityJet for Air France and Blue Islands Airways liveries, and two Dornier 328-100 aircraft are maintained solely to provide excellent availability and service to the ad-hoc and last minute ACMI markets. More than 100 different domestic and European destinations are served each year by ScotAirways aircraft operating charter flights for a number of customers such as sports teams, the music industry and corporations large and small.
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