Andrew Eames picks six of the UK’s most exhilarating air services
1. Glasgow to Barra, Outer Hebrides
At a time when planes are getting bigger and airports are turning into cities, it is a real delight to discover that these shores still have some of the world’s most exhilarating scheduled flights – the antithesis of modern air travel.
The Glasgow-Barra service tops my list because it lands on a beach, and is the only UK flight whose schedule can vary according to the tides. But that’s not all. The 70-minute route is operated by Loganair under the Flybe franchise.
I boarded the 19-seat Twin Otter on a lovely spring day, and as the flight path was low, got an eyeful of everything: the Glasgow shipyard cranes, fishing boats in the Firth of Clyde out to the left, and the shammy-leather Highlands, snow-topped in the distance, to the right.
Beyond the Clyde, rills of land furred with forest and veined with rivers passed underneath us, followed by a succession of lochs, glassy calm at one end, stippled by wind at the other, with fish farms making geometric shapes in the water. It was like a selection of glorious aerial photographs.
After that, the horizon emptied. Alarmingly, we seemed to be setting out in a tiny aircraft across the Atlantic, until a thin thread of distant land materialised out of the mist: the Outer Hebrides. We skimmed over a skirt of islets, and suddenly were down on Barra’s Traigh Mhor beach and stepping out on to the dazzling white sand.
As a tractor unloaded the luggage, I caught up with captain Fraser Beaton. Landing on the beach doesn’t provide any additional hazards, he said, as shell sand is particularly compact and there’s space on Traigh Mhor for a variety of approaches.
The main problem is low cloud at Barra, but in all his years on the route he’s only had to divert once, and that was because of a lightning strike.
Up to 13 flights a week; from £70 return. flybe.com
2. Westray to Papa Westray, Orkney Islands
This is another one for the record-baggers. The flight between Westray and Papa Westray is the shortest in the world, and with a following wind can be completed in as little as 47 seconds.
It’s also operated by Loganair using an eight-seater Britten-Norman Islander.
Papa Westray is only 7.2km long by 1.6km wide, and the distance between airfields is 2.7km across a shallow strait, so the flight is more of a swoop from one grassy pebble in the sea to another.
It’s hard to know where to look, you’ve got so little time; whether to try to pick out the distant landing strip, or to peer down at the little sandy islands with famously delicious seaweed-eating sheep down below.
The flight is part of a twice-daily round that starts in Kirkwall, then drops down to the two Westrays, before returning to the base.
There’s a fine piece of cockpit video that can be viewed here: tinyurl.com/c7kuhel.
Twice daily; from £15 return. loganair.co.uk
3. London City to Guernsey, Channel Islands
London City is good fun – a proper international airport in the heart of a big city, yet intimate and quick. It’s also STOL (short take-off and landing), which means flight angles at a rollercoaster 5.5 degrees (the norm is 3 degrees).
However, it is the contrast between leaving the glittering towers of Canary Wharf and arriving over the peppering of German watchtowers on Guernsey’s southwesterly cliffs that makes this route unique. Landing at Guernsey can be equally dramatic in the winter, when there are strong winds. Expect views of the harbour at St Peter Port and a slice of mid-island countryside. The 75-minute journey and 42-seat ATR Turboprop means in-flight service is included.
Twice daily (not weekends); from £129 return. aurigny.com
4. Guernsey to Alderney, Channel Islands
The check-in queue for the smallest of the Channel Islands feels like an exclusive club.
Air travel to Alderney is entrusted to Britten-Norman Trislanders (13 seats) and Dornier 228s (16 seats) that take 15 minutes to make the trip.
Looking like fat gnats, they climb over the islands of Herm and Jethou, with Sark and Jersey beyond, then claw across the 38km of sea at an ideal height for seeing everything, including L’Etac and Ortac rocks, home to thousands of gannets.
What you’ll glimpse as you bank for the part-grassy and notoriously windy Alderney airport is a chip of an island 5.6km long, 2.5km wide.
Its location, only 16km miles from France, has given it a difficult history, one that blazes out from every promontory, bunker and tower.
Nine times a day; from £86 return. aurigny.com
5. Land’s End to the Scilly Isles
You know you’re in for something special when your airport has a wood-burning stove and is set where the mainland runs out. What lies beyond? A verdant archipelago with big beaches: the Scilly Isles.
The Skybus service from Isles of Scilly Steamship Company has an air link from Land’s End and from Newquay and Exeter. Still, it is the Land’s End departures – operated by 19-seat Twin Otters and eight-seat Britten-Norman Islanders – that capture the imagination.
It feels like setting off into the unknown, swapping the golden beaches of Cornwall for the Caribbean blues of Scillonian waters. Pilot Andrew Evans says the 15- to 20-minute journey is at its best first thing in the morning, “with the sun coming up and the sea flat and calm, just like glass”.
If it’s too windy to fly, then there’s always the company’s boat.
30 flights a day from Land’s End; £100 return. islesofscilly-travel.co.uk
6. Lydd to Le Touquet, France
And finally, an international flight, but one that is tantamount to a private plane experience – partly because that’s what Lydd airport is all about, and partly because the aircraft itself, a nine-seater Piper Chieftain, is a veteran of private flying.
After the briefest, most personal of check-ins, the Chieftain kicks away like a cross-Channel swimmer, crosses the quartz-like waters, above scars left by supertankers, and descends over a yellow-green wave-serrated sea to where it hits Le Touquet’s broad sands, all in 15 minutes.
The landing strip looms through the pilot’s window, there’s a bit of swaying, then a bump and a skid.
Le Touquet’s terminal only takes a minute to walk through, and there are bicycles for rent, perfect for visiting this Paris-by-?the-sea.
Weekends March to October; £150 return. lyddair.com
