CIVIL AIR AGE – 1931

The pace of development of Orkney’s civilian air services was extraordinary. Within a period of just three years, Orkney progressed from having non service at all to a situation whereby the county was served by two competing airlines offering services to Inverness, Wick, Thurso and Aberdeen – and connections as far away as London and mainland Europe.

They were halcyon pioneering days. Stromness had its own airport, Kirkwall had two, while a regular inter-island service was established, with not only the country’s first domestic air mail service but also Britain’s first air ambulance service. Orkney really was at the forefront of civil aviation developments.

And much of the credit was due to one man. Ted Fresson. He had made his first visit to the county in 1931 and immediately realised the potential for an air service. It took him less than two years to get one off the ground.

He visited the county offering short pleasure trips over the islands and established the first of many aviation milestones when he flew 18-year-old Miss Agnes Shearer – a reporter of The Orcadian – to Wick. Miss Shearer, later to become Mrs Scott Moncreiff and an author of some repute before being tragically drowned in an Orkney loch in 1943, thus became the first Orkney resident to fly over the Pentland Firth.

It was February, 1933, when it was announced that at an airfield of around 30 acres at Wideford Farm, on the Kirkwall-St Andrews road, had been approved and licensed to allow Captain Fresson to start a service between Orkney and Inverness. Kirkwall building contractor James Craigie was employed to level out the new airfield, and a new company called Highland Airways would operate the flights.

Monday, May 8, 1933 saw the first scheduled flight, piloted by Ted Fresson, land at Wideford Farm from Inverness, via Wick, to be welcomed by county convener Storer Clouston and Provost John Slater of Kirkwall. The aircraft “presented the appearance of a silver bullet crossing the sky,” said The Orcadian.

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