Air Scotland

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</td></tr><tr><th colspan="2">Hubs</th><td>Glasgow International Airport</td></tr><tr><th colspan="2">Parent company</th><td>H Top Hotels Group</td></tr>

Air Scotland
IATA 1X	ICAO GRE	Callsign GREECE AIRWAYS
Founded		2002
Fleet size		1
Destinations		8
Headquarters		Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Key people		Lindsey Schultz
Website: http://www.air-scotland.com

Image:Air scotland boeing 757 SX-BLW.jpg

Air Scotland is a low-cost airline based in Glasgow, Scotland. It operates scheduled services from Glasgow International Airport, and other UK airports, to the Mediterranean and Athens using the air operator's certificate of Greece Airways, a Greek registered company and licensed by the Greek Civil Aviation Authority. An article in The Herald Newspaper reports that Air Scotland may be changing its name to topjetair shortly.

1 History
2 Destinations
3 Fleet
4 External links

[edit] History

Air Scotland was established in November 2002 by Iraq-born businessman Dhia Al-Ani and started operations on 29 March 2003, using 2 Boeing 757-200 aircraft operated by Electra Airlines, to Spanish holiday resorts. The company was a ticket provider for Electra Airlines until 25 April 2003, when the Electra aircraft were grounded by British Airports Authority over debts owed to the airport operator. Air Scotland ceased the agreement with Electra and began operating with Air Holland, who agreed to resume operation of the former Electra routes. With the demise of Air Holland, it then began operating under the air operator's certificate of Greece Airways, which was formed out of Electra and owned by Mr Al-Ani, albeit with only one 757 aircraft. All aircraft - before 2006 - that have operated for Air Scotland have carried the operator's livery of white fuselage with the Flag of Scotland design on the aircraft tailfin.

Under Mr Al-Ani's ownership, there were reports of Air Scotland looking to lease two Lockheed L-1011 Tristar to utilise on services from Glasgow to Miami, New York City and Cuba 1, and to fly between Glasgow and London Stansted Airport to Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq, but these failed to materialise.

At the start of October 2005 Mr Al-Ani sold his stake in the airline to H Top Hotels Group of Barcelona, Spain. However, administrative difficulties in transferring ownership of the airline resulted in the operator's solitary aircraft being grounded at Palma over unpaid fuel bills. Passengers were left stranded for up to 17 hours and in one instance armed police were called to calm angry passengers delayed in Palma [1]. The knock on effect to the airline's network as a result of the delay was considerable. An aircraft was chartered from Fischer Air Polska to help clear the backlog, but returned to Poland empty after the pilot refused service to Air Scotland as he believed that they had not paid. Air Scotland had in fact transferred money to Fischer Air Polska's account that morning. [2]

Air Scotland have recently expanded into Manchester, Birmingham, Doncaster-Sheffield and Newcastle.

[edit] Destinations

Summer 2006

Alicante from Glasgow and Manchester
Athens from Glasgow
Barcelona from Manchester
Girona from Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Doncaster, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich
Malaga from Glasgow and Manchester
Palma from Glasgow and Manchester

Winter 2006

Their aircraft will be leased to other operaters during the winter.

No scheduled flights are able to be booked at present via their website.

NB On the Air Scotland website, "Robin Hood Airport, Doncaster-Sheffield" has been referred to as simply "Doncaster"

[edit] Fleet

Air Scotland currently have only one A320-211 in the fleet. This is based in Glasgow and registered as SX-BLX and there are currently no titles on this aircraft. There are plans to acquire a second aircraft and this will be based in Gerona. Prior services were flown by a single Boeing 757-236 SX-BLW which wore a combination of Air Scotland & Greece Airways decals. This aircraft is now in service with jet2.com under the registration G-LSAD.