FlyBe Flight

The sound of a propellor-driven aircraft is heard most days over the peninsula, usually in the early afternoon moving from south to north, but it's taken some time to discover what commercial flight it is.  On Monday the sky was clear enough, and the 'plane low enough, to get a picture.

G-BZFP is a de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter operated by Loganair on behalf of FlyBe.  The one that came over us at 2.51pm that day was probably flight number BE6826 from Glasgow International to Stornoway.  There's a close-up picture of it here.

The DHC stands for de Havilland Canada, a company which built sturdy 'planes designed for short take off and landing in the rugged areas of that country - which makes them ideal for Scottish west coast conditions. Their capabilities are illustrated by the fact that one of FlyBe's commercial flights lands on the beach of the island of Barra.  To watch G-BZFP do a relatively straightforward landing, click here, and to see it take off in pretty atrocious conditions, click here.

Those of us who are of a more mature vintage will remember de Havilland as one of the great British aeroplane companies.  Founded in 1920, it went on to build iconic machines such as the Dragon, the World War II Mosquito, and the Comet, the first commercial jet airliner.