Flight blow for Highlands

It is a long way from Inverness to New York and even longer to Los Angeles. The repercussions of the forthcoming open skies agreement between the EU and the US have already been felt at Inverness Airport with bmi announcing yesterday it would pull out of the Inverness- London Heathrow route in March. The deal, which will liberalise transatlantic air travel with the advent of new and cheaper flights between Europe and America, has added to the pressure on transatlantic carriers to secure slots at the international European hubs. These have become as gold dust and bmi appears to have decided that the slot would be better used on the big fish of transatlantic routes than the small fry of Inverness-Heathrow.