‘I’m cabin crew and captain’

Pilot Colin McAllister has witnessed some of the most spectacular sights from the air that the world has to offer – he says Orkney’s coastline is among them.

The 59-year-old is retiring after 21 years of flying a tiny island-hopper around the Scottish archipelago, which he likens to the clear waters and white sands of the Caribbean.

His tens of thousands of journeys with Loganair include the world’s shortest flight – a nippy two-minute commute from Westray to Papa Westray, which are 1.7 miles apart.

He landed his final commercial flight at Kirkwall on Friday afternoon, ending a career he says he was fortunate enough to love – but it was the people, not just the scenery, that made it so enjoyable.

“There’s so much that I like about this job,” he said. “Flying with the passengers, the intimacy of the relationship – I’m not locked behind the flight deck door.

“I get to share the emotions, I hear the laughter, I hear the sobs, it’s quite an immersive job. I don’t just fly the aircraft. I do a bit of baggage handling, getting folk on and off the plane, I’m cabin crew as well as the first officer and the captain.

“So it’s absolutely everything – you get involved with the whole job when you fly an islander.”

Colin’s route to becoming a pilot is about as romantic as they come.

It was a boyhood dream, one that he decided to make a reality while he was travelling in Nepal in his late 20s.

He had taken a light aircraft flight over the foothills of the Himalayas – an awesome sight that gave him his “lightbulb moment”.

From there, he secured his licence and went on to fly in New Zealand and memorably, in Botswana’s safari industry.

“Botswana was African nirvana – it was beautiful,” he said. “The wildlife in the bush is incredible. To land at the airfields I’d be chasing off herds of elephants and giraffe.

“But you can’t live in paradise forever. I’m Scottish and my heart was being pulled back to Scotland.”

Initially Colin returned to his home city of Glasgow, where he joined Loganair in the early 2000s.

Six months later, he moved to Orkney to fly the air ambulance as well as scheduled services between the isles on the Britten-Norman Islander.

The Islander was first built in 1965 – well before commercial planes were fitting with computers. Colin believes it to be an “absolute classic”.

“It’s like a time-warp machine,” he said. “It’s just an incredible work horse – it’s like a tractor of the skies essentially.

“You can fix it locally, we’ve got the engineering know-how here.”

Carrying a maximum of eight passengers at a time, Colin estimates he has flown more than 40,000 journeys for Loganair – around 9,000 hours of flying.

He says the routes attract a lot of tourists and aviation enthusiasts who want to experience the world’s shortest flight.

Last year he found himself flying the cast of The Outrun around Orkney, where filming was taking place, including Hollywood star Saoirse Ronan.

The chance encounter led to Colin landing a small part as a pilot in the film, which he was shocked to discover made the final cut.

For the most part, Colin’s passengers are ordinary islanders whom he has grown to know very well in the last two decades.

Along with ferry services, the inter-island flights are vital to keep communities connected, he says, and both forms of transport are feeling the strain of demand.

As he reflected on his time serving Orkney before his final take-off, Colin’s emotions were mixed – but undoubtedly positive.

“I’m happy I’ve got here, happy I got to retire,” he said. “Not everyone gets a chance to retire from a job they enjoy.

“I’ll miss it without a doubt. When the plane goes to the hanger… I’m going to stand at the bar with a glass in my hand and a grin on my face, and I’ll be there until the airport closes.”