Focus: Direct services to Glasgow may prove to be a flight of fancy, writes David Leask

IN the distant past, there was always plenty of warning that the Glasgow plane was on its way. Lewis Morrison, like most of the children growing up at the edge of Connel airfield, near Oban, knew all the early signs that a flight was due.

"Two guys from the council would come out in a Land Rover and drive the sheep off the runway," he explained. "The whole thing was exciting but, thinking back, a bit amateurish."

Connel, originally laid out on the edge of Loch Linnhe as a Second World War auxiliary landing strip, has never really made its mark as a destination on the world of scheduled flights. At least, not until now.

A generation after Mr Morrison, now 56, and his friends watched the long-abandoned flights from Glasgow, councillors in Argyll have spent more than £6m in an ambitious bid to re-establish regular services from Oban.

Their efforts, practically unnoticed outside Argyll, have sparked demands for an Audit Scotland investigation from local residents and the leader of the council's opposition. They have also raised eyebrows among the professionals who would have to carry out the flights.

Officially, the Argyll Air Services project has cost £6.25m in capital funding and involves upgrading and creating new hard runways and terminals at Connel and on the islands of Coll and Colonsay.

The Scottish Executive has also agreed to provide around £500,000 worth of subsidies a year to provide twice-weekly scheduled flights to Coll and Colonsay. Also planned are 40 flights a year to each of the islands to help ferry 15 children home from school in Oban for weekends during term time.

But, critics argue, Argyll did not need to spend £6m. Orkney, for example, operates a far bigger network of island flights using gravel runways costing a fraction of Argyll's "tarmac carpets".

The investment was made in the hope of turning Connel into what the council has officially dubbed a Hebridean hub, starting with links to Glasgow Airport.

The Herald last week rang airline executives to see if they thought the scheme was viable. On condition of anonymity, they all gave the same answer: no.

Oban, more than two hours from Glasgow by car and three hours by train, is just too close to the central belt and too small to sustain regular flights, they said.

More importantly, they added, such flights would be doomed to be unreliable. Connel airfield - or Oban Airport to give it its new official name - will never be able to handle instrument landings. Pilots flying into the airfield, which has 1000ft Ben Lora at the end of its runway, will always have to see where they are going.

"Oban to Glasgow: it can't be done," a senior Scottish aviator told The Herald. "It would be a commercial no-no, an environmental no-no and a practical no-no."

Even the man employed by Argyll and Bute Council to run the new airport after its completion, Peter Jackson, is highly sceptical about regular flights to Glasgow Airport. "I don't disagree with the operators on the potential of Oban-Glasgow at all," said Mr Jackson, when asked why the airline executives did not fancy the route. "This airport will be a visual airport, the scheduled services being proposed are out to the islands of Coll and Colonsay; there are 3500ft mountains between here and Glasgow.

"Scheduled flights was something the council decided they wanted some years ago but in my opinion scheduled flights will be a small part of the business we will develop at the airport."

Mr Jackson, who was appointed as the council's airport development manager in April of last year, sees some prospect for flights to the low-cost hub at Prestwick in Ayrshire but he is far more interested in ways of growing niche markets, including private and chartered planes bringing wealthy tourists.

Yet Mr Jackson's political superiors remain convinced that Oban will get scheduled services to Glasgow and beyond. Allan MacAskill, Argyll's council leader and a Connel resident, remains upbeat about the project. He has championed the scheme for years, so passionately that some locals have started calling the airfield "MacAskill International".

So how does Mr MacAskill, who retires in May, see Connel airfield in five to 10 years' time?

"I would expect an increase in scheduled flights," he said. "Flights flying out of Oban Airport to Glasgow, Edinburgh, the Outer Hebrides, and maybe even the occasional one to the continent."

Mr Macaskill and his council colleagues employed consultants who told them that Connel could be a Hebridean hub and they are sticking to that vision, whatever their officials say.

Mr Jackson said of the Oban-Glasgow route: "Certainly, before we came here, people in the council were led to believe it was possible. We would have liked to have started it with a blank sheet of paper. True, whoever was brought in would have done it differently."

So Argyll has effectively built a new airport at Connel, designed for, among other things, flights even its manager does not think will happen.

The council, of course, cannot operate its own flights. Mr Macaskill stressed it does not even intend to run the airport. So who is going to fly out of Oban?

Mr Jackson has still to hold full talks with potential operators, despite an initial target of getting the Coll and Colonsay flights off the ground by August 1. Oban airport, which will be officially opened by Transport Minister Tavish Scott next month, is nowhere near finished. Connel's main runway has flooded. So has the new hard strip on Coll.

Rumours abound of other technical problems at all three airfields after design work was carried out by council road engineers rather than aviation specialists. In addition, the runways on the two islands are still just about 500 yards long, making them suitable for only one type of plane widely used in the UK - the ageing Islander, whose lifespan will be limited and never needed tarmac runways.

Mr Jackson, still working out of a cabin on the edge of the runway, wants to wait until he takes over the new-look airport from contractors before he approaches prospective operators.

Meanwhile, he faces the complicated task of making sure the airfield gets licensed. For eight years, Connel has been successfully growing private flights without a licence and under the management of businessman Paul Keegan but it needs a licence for scheduled flights.

Mr Jackson, a former inspector for the Civil Aviation Authority is better placed than most to know exactly how to get the paperwork that would enable scheduled planes to take off - whether for Glasgow or Colonsay.

His appointment will have done a lot to reassure the CAA, which had been highly critical of Argyll's failure to hire an aviation professional before the council, using its roads department, began finalising its plans for the airport.

Ray Elgy, the authority's head of aerodrome standards, met council officials to discuss the project only a little over a year ago. That meeting sparked a lengthy letter, dated January 2006, detailing CAA concerns over the project.

In his letter, Mr Elgy said: "A number of issues of notable significance were identified during the meeting that merit your particular attention. Prime among these is the fact that a considerable degree of development has been planned and, in some cases, initiated, prior to the formal involvement of the authority."

Mr Keegan, the businessman currently running the airfield, is watching developments with growing concern. Based in a mobile office near Mr Jackson's, he has been managing the airfield for nothing in return for a contract to supply fuel.

"I think the island communities of Coll and Colonsay, which deserve a usable air service, have been cruelly deceived as to what all the investment is going to bring them," he said yesterday. "To a lesser extent, the people of Oban, who have been given strong hints of air services to Glasgow and Edinburgh and Prestwick, have also been misled."

Community leaders in and around Connel were always enthusiastic about the airfield growing. They have benefited from the business brought to the area by the rich private fliers attracted by Mr Keegan but that goodwill was quickly lost.

There was no consultation at all on the effects airport expansion would have on Connel, at least until Mr Jackson came.

Ardchattan Community Council, which covers the airfield, has called on Audit Scotland to investigate the project.

Iain Macdonald, the community council's chairman, said: "All we want are answers to our questions."

Ellen Morton, the Liberal Democrat councillor who leads the opposition to Mr MacAskill's independent administration, has backed Mr Macdonald and his colleagues. She said: "It seems to me somebody outside the council should have a look at this."