PLANS to subsidise air routes from Scotland's secondary airports have been dropped in favour of a wider scheme to benefit the sector, the Sunday Herald has learned.

Airports including Aberdeen, Inverness and Prestwick had been set to benefit from a multi-million-pound Scottish Enterprise (SE) fund that would have paid airlines 30% of the start-up costs for short-haul flights to equivalent European airports for the first three years of the route. SE had devised the scheme as a means of getting around the European state aid rules that forced the Scottish Government to scrap its more wide-ranging Air Route Development Fund in 2007.

It had been planning to submit the proposals to Europe for final approval earlier this year. Edinburgh and Glasgow would have been too big to be admissible, though SE was planning to offer them the consolation of a wider push to support the industry, along with other interested groups such as VisitScotland.

However, SE changed its mind and delayed the whole scheme in favour of a rethink. It is now planning to launch a scheme to benefit all Scottish airports, and long-haul as well as short-haul, although it had yet to decide what form this will take.

The news comes at a time when the Scottish industry is nervous about the future of short-haul, which took a knock last month when Flybe announced it was scrapping its Inverness-London route and selling the slots to easyJet.

Julian Taylor, SE's executive director of strategy and economics, said: "We believe we can deliver more extensive support that will benefit all Scottish airports and help us to secure major new routes.

"We hope to announce further details over the next few months."