Britain's Shortest Airline - Highland Express (Reworked)

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This is a reworked and reuploaded version of the original video.

Hello! :D

Today, rather than looking at a plane or an airport, we'll be covering the history of possibly Britain's shortest-lived airline.

While there are plenty of carriers that have been formed, but collapsed into insolvency before they could carry out their first flight, Highland Express actually did succeed in commencing operations, with the premise of delivering services between Scotland and North America in the same vein as Virgin Atlantic.

However, the fiscal limitations of the airline industry, combined with a fickle market, meant that within four months of its start, the airline was gone forever.

The views and opinions expressed in this video are my personal appraisal and are not the views and opinions of any of these individuals or bodies who have kindly supplied me with footage and images.

Also, I realise that in many shots I incorrectly show certain aircraft or airlines that aren't true to what I'm discussing, but sadly - with the constraints of copyrights and attributions - the number of pictures I can safely use are somewhat limited.

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Thanks again, everyone, and enjoy! :D

References:
- Yesterday's Airlines (and their respective sources)
- Wikipedia (and its respective references)

[RoyxlPFX]

May have been the shortest lived, but it certainly stuck around long enough to have one of the nicest looking UK liveries from the 80s, such as BritishCal, BOAC, BEA, Monarch, Virgin, etc!

[simonaltham]

G-HIHO was a heap of junk, I worked on it at Birmingham. They weren't allowed to use the ice containers in the forward cabin as they were cracked and when the ice melted the water went straight into the electric and electronic compartment under the floor, causing all sorts of problems. The bung in the upper deck toilet tank was also jammed open, which was rather entertaining when someone who didn't know went to service it! The Birmingham Prestwick service was taken over by a 707 when the 747 stopped. Think I pushed HIHO out twice and the 707 once before it collapsed,

[robertpartington]

I flew on G-HIHO from STN to PIK with less than 100 fellow passengers. Upon landing at PIK, somewhat hard, the overhead luggage bins fell down!

[andybaker]

I remember Highland Express coming up as an option when I was looking at flights to the US in the summer of 1987, when I was going to visit family in North Carolina. Back then, such things were done through travel agents, and fortunately a different travel agent told me about the new direct service on Piedmont from Gatwick to Charlotte NC before I could do anything about booking Highland Express!

[koksy]

Fares were as follows:

UK to USA:

30th May - 15th June: £118
16th June - 29th June: £148
30th June - 14th Sep: £188
15th Sep - 31st Oct: £168

USA to UK:

31st May - 14th June: £118
15th June - 31st Sep: £188
1st Oct - 24th Oct: £168

£20 supplement to the above for flights departing Fri Sat Sun.
Additional charge of £9 for US departure tax.

Free coach was provided from Victoria to Stansted airport.

Flights operated from Birmingham to Newark on Wed Sat Sun, Stansted on Mon Tue Thu Fri.

[scottie]

A great video of an interesting chapter in Scottish Aviation history. However another factor that did for Highlsnd Express was Prestwick Airport itself.

At the time, Prestwick had no reference to Glasgow. It was around 40 miles from Glasgow, which had its own far busier airport dealing more with domestic and European travel and indeed for parts of Glasgow, Edinburgh Airport was closer than Prestwick.

However under existing UK-Government rules, Prestwick had an absolute monopoly on transatlantic flights. So if you wanted to fly directly from Scotland to North America you had to go via Prestwick.

The issue was at the time, Prestwick was an absolute pig of an airport to get to. It had no direct rail-link and no motorway link. So what many travellers did was bypass it and fly via London instead.

To drum up business, the state owned Scottish Bus Group ran a feeder service from Glasgow to Prestwick using a branded coach. But even that didn’t help.

[JuanGSR]

Great story, it was nice of you to rework this video

[thisisnev]

Highland Express-branded in-flight headphones still crop up from time to time on eBay in the Other Airline Collectibles category and, as they were intended for business-class passenger use, they're actually pretty good for the era. They're actually useable, too, having a standard single-pin connection.

[sarahconway]

In July 1987 I (eventually) flew Stansted to Newark on Highland Express after a night put up in a hotel, in Stevenage I think, because of delays. The owner was on the flight and went around apologising for the delay and handing out pens as, according to him, we would all want to write to him and complain! Memory may be failing me here, but I think I paid £99 one way.

[leonb]

I actually remember this airline. Part of its reason was due to a deal among the US, UK and a few European governments and the PANYNJ, owners of the NYC regional airports including then underutilized Newark (EWR) airport, especially for long international flights. I believe part of the deal was to have a set number of flight slots per year for 'discount' airliners, one set by UK/EU countries and one set by a US based airline like PeopleExpress.

[johnbuttery]

Was this the inspiration for "Air Scotia" in "The High Life"?

[van_trippin]

I flew on it, BHX - PIK. I was an 'unaccompanied minor' with a mate just for a laugh, ticket was about £12

[liesl]

Great video! I don't recall this airline at all. I flew with Zoom a couple of times in the early 2000s on the GLA - YYZ route and don't remember them being multi stop international flights.

[alzyerpal-TV]

I guess the 'Highland' reference was just an attempt to cash in on the affection surrounding B-Cal ? The occasional foray to Prestwick which is very much in the Scottish lowlands didn't really make it a Scottish airline either.

[Bod]

I went on that with my family as a teenager from London to Prestwick 29 quid

[paullacey]

Beautiful looking plane though, Loganair today look good too

[edwardburek]

"This is your captain speaking, ladies and gentlemen, thanking you for flying Highland Express's maiden flight, and I'd just like to remind you to fasten your seat belt for landing and put your seat in an upright position. Oh, by the way, we've just gone out of business."

[drstevenrey]

To me, this goes in the gigantic bin of numbties in the 80's who tried to 'play' airline, not knowing what or how an airline really works. We had a whole lot of this sort. They all produce little else than a big hole in the cash register and also pull other companies down by never paying up. I h8 people like this. You have to get up really early in the night to be a Branson in this world.

[andyish]

That is nothing in terms of short lived.
In 1997 Happy Airlines of Nigeria has filed for bankruptcy three days BEFORE it was registered.
The reason being that in that country bankruptcy procedures take a couple of weeks, whereas airline registration is a matter of 2-3 days.

[herseem]

Richard Branson did it carefully and was good at publicity so that helped. His own account of getting Virgin airlines started in his autobiography is quite interesting.