Readers in the Western Isles will have to wait until after lunch for their newspapers from today.

The Scottish Newspaper Society say a hike in air charter charges would have cost them about £6 to send each copy of the 7500 daily newspapers to the Outer Hebrides.

Daily newspapers were flown from Aberdeen to Stornoway and Benbecula on a Loganair charter. The plan is take to them by road to Ullapool and on to Stornoway by ferry. Extra distributors have been hired to take the papers to outlying parts of Lewis and Harris.

Retired mill worker Malcolm Mackay, 74, said: "This is the kind of shoddy service we had in the 1950s."

Loganair chief operating officer Phil Preston would not comment on price rises.