One of Loganair’s top bosses received a first hand experience of his airline’s poor punctuality after being hit by a three hour flight delay last night.
Maurice Boyle, the company’s operations director, was stuck in Stornoway airport immediately after pledging to Western Isles Council the troubled airline’s year-long reliability problems would be a thing of the past.
His 6.35pm departure to Edinburgh was delayed until 9.30pm.
Earlier, the airline said dramatic improvements in its plane services will be seen within weeks as headway is made in tackling its troubled reliability problems.
In October, Loganair pilots slammed the lack of engineering cover for the planes which serve the Western Isles and other Scottish islands.
The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) expressed concerns over issues in its engineering department, saying insufficient personnel meant the remaining engineers struggling to cope with the workload.
It claimed planes suffered recurring faults or were returned from the hangar “unserviceable.”
Loganair told Western Isles Council it is working through its “Project Optima” which is a programme of projects and initiatives launched last summer, with the goal of improving punctuality.
This involves “a complete review of the company’s operation to ensure that all links in the chain are robust and fit for purpose.”
Each factor is being “scrutinised to ensure they are not adversely impacting punctuality.”
Mr Boyle stressed he was “very confident” the company would resolve the issues.
He added: “Actually, I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t think we would be confident in restoring the operational performance of the airline.
“We have Project Optima in place which is to improve our technical reliability and our on-time performance.
“We are working very hard to put all those measures in place and hopefully we reassured the council that (this) will restore our on-time performance and hopefully restore our customer confidence.”
Western Isles Council said it had an “open and frank discussion of the challenges” with Mr Boyle.
He gave a “very clear and honest explanation” as to the reasons behind its bad reliability and punctuality.
The council’s transport chairman John Mackay said: “We do now have greater assurances after our meeting that the airline has a better appreciation of the concerns of the community and that they are taking the need for significant improvement as a key priority going forward.
“We are encouraged that the airline is seeking to re-establish what was previously a generally very positive and productive working relationship with the council and look forward to similar meetings on a more regular basis with the airline in the future.”