Loganair rolls back on new flights as it grapples with poor performance 

Loganair ATR 72 arriving at Sumburgh Airport in gale force winds in January. Photo: Ronnie Robertson.

Loganair’s poor performance has seen it put a pause on new flights until it can improve resilience.

Chief commercial officer Luke Lovegrove admitted the airline was “not where we would like to be”.

He told today’s (Tuesday)  external transport forum that 2023 was “another challenging year for us”.

On time performance in and out of Shetland was only 71 per cent compared to 79 per cent across the wider network.

Mr Lovegrove blamed “global supply chain issues” on the poor performance.

When asked by VisitScotland’s Steve Mathieson whether Loganair was still planning to introduce a third weekly Heathrow service, Mr Lovegrove said that had been put on hold due to the performance issues.

“We have taken the approach this year of not proactively adding additional services in order to get the resilience up first,” he said.

“Our priority is to make sure we have superior on time performance before we start adding additional flaying.

“That is a position, which I think is a sensible one.”

He said the airline was looking to “inject some resilience” into the system – and was hoping to see “significant improvements” this year.

Shetland West councillor Liz Peterson said she was pleased to see the airline was “building in more resilience”.

“Hopefully that will decrease the large number of delays and cancellations because I think that’s been the biggest issue for local residents in the community.”

“I suggest you still have some way to go to recover your reputation for reliability for the people of Shetland.”

Forum chairwoman Moraig Lyall told Mr Lovegrove he still had “work to do” to improve reliability.