SCOTLAND’S islands regularly rank among some of the most beautiful places in the country.
But for those looking for a rural retreat, they are almost always better off booking flights to mainland Europe for a summer getaway.
The transport issue is even more acute for the roughly 71,230 people who live in Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Outer Hebrides), Orkney and Shetland.
For the price of a flight from Glasgow to Stornoway, you could fly from Scotland’s largest city to Alicante, Spain, on a return ticket and still have £111 left over.
That is despite the Spanish flight taking around three hours (excluding a change at Gatwick for the dates we chose at random) while the internal Scottish flight taking only an hour.
A trip from Glasgow to Sumburgh, Shetland Islands, on December 5, returning on December 8, would set you back £336 – for a journey lasting no longer than an hour and a half each way.
The issue of sky-high fares is not, therefore, one of distance. Neither is it anything to do with higher costs for domestic flights versus foreign journeys.
Someone taking the 45-minute flight between Glasgow and Belfast can get a return between December 5 to 8 costing just £80.
Even better value is the cost of a flight to London, which – for a trip between January 14 to 20 – costs only £52, during which the passenger will not spend more than an hour and a half in the air.
It is tempting therefore to go searching for the inevitable example of how the Europeans do it so much better. But the problems persist abroad, too.
For example, to fly from Madrid to Tenerife, admittedly a longer journey than all the ones we’ve previously considered at just under three hours, costs at least £214 on AirEuropa on December 5 to 8.
If you wanted in January to go from Oslo to Longyearbyen, the largest settlement in the remote Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, you would be looking at dropping £327 for a direct flight lasting just under two hours.
And to go from Copenhagen to the Faroe Islands at the beginning of next year costs around £307 for flights lasting just over two hours each way.
To fly from mainland Scotland to any of the islands we’re looking at, you need to fly Loganair, which operates a monopoly on these routes.
It does a good trade. Despite recording a drop in passenger numbers between 2024 and 2025 of 157,521, post-tax profits were up last year from £5.7 million to £8.2m, according to filings with Companies House.
For some, one option to drive down costs would be nationalisation, so that this money would be put into maintaining the service and driving fares down, rather than enriching shareholders.
“It’s run in a capitalistic way with only one operator. That, I’m afraid, has its inevitable problems,” said Angus MacNeil, the former MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, who raised the possibility of a nationalised service if it could bring down fares.
“Where there’s either cartel or monopoly, they can protest all they want, but we know full well that all sorts of decisions will be made erring on the side of caution towards the company’s bank balance.”
On the other hand, competition may be the way to solve the issue of higher fares, though in the complex world of air travel, this is easier said than done. And there would need to be appetite from any potential competitors.
MacNeil said that he had once spoken with Michael O’Leary, the head of Ryanair, who told him that he could only make a Glasgow to Stornoway service “work” if he cut the number of flights from three to four a day to just one per day.
It is not necessarily helpful to attempt a direct comparison between the services that connect the further flung parts of Spain or Norway with their respective mainlands with the situation in Scotland.
Loganair operates a varied fleet, which adds complexity and cost to its operations.
And while its £8.2m profit seems at first glance to be considerable, the company’s defenders would also point out that air travel is a capital-intensive and volatile business; as shocks like Covid and the wars in Ukraine and Iran have shown, that profitability can take a hammering with no notice.
The company declined to comment.
There are however some ameliorations for islanders. Some routes, like the Glasgow to Barra or Tiree, are protected under public service obligation (PSO) rules, which caps fares through government subsidies.
Islanders also get discounts on their fares through the air discount scheme (ADS).
But Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael, the former Scottish secretary, told The National that this was often not felt to the full extent by customers because the 50% discount only affects the “core” price while Loganair can increase the fuel surcharge.
The company did this in May, in the wake of the Iran war which has sent fuel prices spiralling, with rates hitting as much as £17 on top of the ticket price on the Edinburgh to Shetland route.
Carmichael said he would be “cautious” of making any significant changes, “imperfect” though the current system is.
Air fares are just one of many “hidden costs” for islanders, said the LibDem MP, though he argued against nationalisation on the grounds it could create a “CalMac of the skies”, a concept which would be met with scepticism from many islanders.
He proposed extending the public service obligation regime to cover more routes, which would mean a significant investment from the Scottish Government, or more funding to meet the cost of landing charges, which would also put a cost pressure on Holyrood.
Whatever lies ahead for island flights in Scotland, it is clearly not something that poses any obvious solutions.
By one count, there have been 45 failed companies which have tried to run services between the mainland and the islands in the post-war era, according to Carmichael. For now, business might be good but it certainly isn’t easy.
