Two minutes to Papa Westray

Every weekday a small Loganair twin lifts off from Westray in Orkney, climbs a few hundred feet and lands on Papa Westray. The trip covers 2.7 kilometres and takes about two minutes including taxiing: the shortest scheduled flight in the world. The aircraft is a Britten-Norman Islander, and it is hard to think of a better advertisement for what John Britten and Desmond Norman set out to build in the 1960s: an aeroplane simple enough to run anywhere, tough enough for rough strips and roomy enough to carry nine passengers on hops no airliner would bother with.

Tiger Moths in Sudan

Britten and Norman met as apprentices at the de Havilland Technical School and shared two passions, aircraft and sailing. Norman, the son of the aviator Sir Nigel Norman, flew fighters in the RAF and once crossed the Atlantic with Britten in an old 80-foot ketch. In the mid-1950s the pair founded their company, incorporated on 29 July 1954, and went into crop-spraying, modifying de Havilland Tiger Moths at a works near Ventnor on the Isle of Wight for a contract in Sudan. Their first aircraft, the single-seat BN-1 Finibee, found no manufacturer, and in the 1960s they even built the world’s second hovercraft through a subsidiary, Cushioncraft.

The Islander and the Trislander

Their market study pointed to a twin-engine utility aircraft with the fewest possible systems. The BN-2 Islander first flew from Bembridge on 13 June 1965 and four days later appeared at the Paris Air Show. It was certified in Britain and the United States in 1967 and demand quickly outran the Isle of Wight factory. In 1970 the company stretched it, added a third engine on top of the tail fin and called it the Trislander. Guernsey’s Aurigny flew up to 16 of them for more than 40 years, and the design won the Queen’s Award to Industry in 1975. A military version, the Defender, flew the same year.

Belgium, Switzerland and Romania

Success on the order books did not mean money in the bank. Britten-Norman went into receivership in October 1971 and in August 1972 was bought by the Fairey group, which moved most production to Avions Fairey at Gosselies in Belgium. Fairey too collapsed, and in 1978 the Swiss Oerlikon-Bührle group, owner of Pilatus, took over, which is why many aircraft carry the name Pilatus Britten-Norman. Meanwhile airframes were being assembled in Romania, at IRMA, later Romaero, in Bucharest, which from 1977 produced every Islander and built more than 500 in all. A further 67 were licence-built in the Philippines.

Britain’s last independent airliner maker

After brief spells under British Aerospace and Biofarm, the assets passed in 2000 to B-N Group. A deal to buy Romaero had been announced in 1999, but rising Romanian costs led the company in 2010 to plan a return of manufacturing to Britain. Around 1,280 Islanders have been built and the type is still in production, with the militarised Defender 4000 aimed at police and surveillance users. The British Army flew Islanders over Northern Ireland and the RAF still operates them as the Islander R1. In March 2024 new investors led by 4D Capital Partners took a stake in what is today the only independent commercial aircraft producer in the United Kingdom, now building at Lee-on-the-Solent.

Fabrieken

• Bembridge · Bembridge, Isle of Wight — Historic home and first Islander production; spares today
• Avions Fairey · Gosselies, Belgium — Main production under Fairey ownership from 1972
• IRMA / Romaero · Bucharest, Romania — Assembly from 1969; sole Islander producer from 1977; more than 500 built
• Daedalus Airfield · Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire — Current UK manufacturing site, a former Royal Naval Air Station

Mensen

• Desmond Norman · co-founder and designer — 1929–2002; CBE 1970; later founded his own firms to build the Freelance and Firecracker
• John Britten · co-founder and designer — Met Norman at the de Havilland Technical School

Records en primeurs

• Islander flies the world’s shortest scheduled flight, Westray to Papa Westray, 2.7 km
• Cushioncraft CC1, the world’s second hovercraft
• Queen’s Award to Industry for technological innovation for the Trislander, 1975