Ninety years of Shetland air services

June 2026 marks ninety years of scheduled air services to Sumburgh from Scotland. Ted Fresson of Highland Airways had overseen the creation of Sumburgh airfield as he sought to expand his route network.

Reception committee for the first Highland Airways scheduled flight’s arrival at Sumburgh on 3 June 1936, Ted Fresson ninth from left.

Over the previous two years, there had been spirited competition between Highland Airways, based at Longman Aerodrome, Inverness, and Eric Gander Dower’s Aberdeen Airway based at Dyce – notably on services to Orkney. . A feature of this competition had been their respective development of airfields which they were able to operate for their own exclusive use.

That exclusivity was now no longer to be the case because of the provision of radio facilities at Sumburgh by the civil aviation authorities, deemed essential in view of the relatively long over-water crossing. This meant that Fresson could not exclude other operators from ‘his’ airfield, notably Gander Dower’s Aberdeen Airways. 

After earlier proving flights, Fresson announced that Sumburgh would available for scheduled passenger services on 3 June. Gander Dower, however, advertised his Aberdeen Airways’ service as launching on 2 June, an action that prompted Fresson to reiterate that the airfield would not be available until the 3rd.

Eric Gander Dower, Eric Starling, Viscount Arbuthnott and Caroline Brunning at Sumburgh, 2 June 1936. They brought their own petrol to refuel the aircraft for the return journey.

However, at 1235 on 2 June, Aberdeen Airways de Havilland Rapide, G-ADDE, chief pilot Eric Starling flying, touched down at Sumburgh. Starling’s flying log records ‘Inauguration flight with Viscount Arbuthnott, Mr Rankin, Mr GD [Eric Gander Dower], Mr Fraser, and Miss B [Gander Dower’s partner, Caroline Brunning]. Record trips both ways. Flew direct’.

AlthoughTed Fresson had written to Gander Dower to say that the airfield would not open until 3 June that had not deterred Gander Dower. In his memoirs, Fresson wrote that ‘Foolishly, I did not send Jim Black, our Sumburgh agent, instructions to immobilise the airfield by placing obstacles over the landing area.’ The competition was indeed spirited!

Fresson’s first flight, with Rapide G-ACPN, duly operated on 3 June, marking the ‘official’ opening. Departure was from his airfield at Kintore, since he was barred from Gander Dower’s base at Dyce, and he flew with a stop at Kirkwall. His log was annotated ‘Shetland inaugural service’ and, although he had been gazumped by Gander Dower, his flight was nonetheless the first service linking Shetland with Orkney.

The relationship between Gander Dower and Fresson was complex. The rivalry was undoubted, but on the quiet, pilots for both operators would help one another out when the need arose. Recollecting the Sumburgh inaugural services, Starling later recalled that the 2 June arrival was ‘a bit naughty’, but several years later he went on to fly for Fresson. When airlines were nationalised, it fell to Fresson as representation of the British European Airways Corporation to visit Gander Dower to relieve him of his scheduled service operation, but both men lost out under nationalisation and could, and did, empathise with one another over the poor treatment. They had become comrades in adversity.

Eric Starling log entry for 2 June 1936

Ted Fresson log entry for 3 June 1936

Further reading:

E E Fresson, Air Road to the Isles, 2nd edition (Erskine: Kea Publishing, 2008).

Iain Hutchison, The Flight of the Starling (Erskine: Kea Publishing, 1992).

Peter V Clegg, Rivals in the North (Clegg: Godalming, 1988).