A sad day for many budding pilots. After 55 years in operation, the Scottish flight school; Tayside Aviation Limited, based at Dundee Airport has entered into administration. The flight school was founded back in February 1968 by pilot, Lovat Fraser. It provided training courses for both private and full commercial licenses.

Tayside Aviation was awarded the first RAF Flying Scholarship contract back in 1978 and in 1994 became the sole UK contractor for the Flying Scholarship Scheme (FSS) and trained over 500 cadets per year with the support of seven sub contractors throughout the UK. Tayside Aviation continued running the Air Cadet Pilot Scheme scholarships for over 30 years. The Pilot Scheme recently went through a competition tendering process as the existing contract with Tayside Aviation was coming to an end. An RAF spokesman said it was reviewing available options for the future delivery of the scholarship.

Tayside Aviation was purchased by the current owner Tony Banks in December 2021, with an already considerable liability for prepaid flying courses.

The current administrators said “Despite a significant investment from the shareholder of £1.5m in addition to the purchase price, these issues have led to ongoing working capital requirements that are unable to be funded.”

“We will be taking all steps to rapidly assess whether there are any parties who would have an interest in the business and assets, and would advise those with an interest to make contact quickly.

We appreciate that there will be many customers who are in receipt of pre-paid flying hours.”

Creditors (including all Flying Courses & Gift Vouchers) should forward any enquiries to the designated email address as follows: taysideaviation@interpathadvisory.com

Any parties interested in any of the company’s assets should note their interest using the following email address: TAinterestedparties@interpathadvisory.com