Tayside Aviation Limited, widely known as Scotland’s premier flight school, has ceased trading after providing more than five decades of flight training at Dundee Airport.
Twenty-two of the company's 25 employees have been made redundant following the appointment of Blair Nimmo and Geoff Jacobs from Interpath Advisory as joint administrators.
A UK CAA Approved Flight Training Organisation, Tayside provided courses from private pilot licences to full commercial airline licences over a span of 53 years. The company also delivered the RAF Air Cadet Pilot Scheme for more than 30 years.
The joint administrators were advised that at the time of purchase by the existing owner in December 2021, Tayside had a significant liability for prepaid flying courses. Delivering these courses adversely affected the company’s ability to generate income from new sales as manhours and air slots were being utilised to honour legacy commitments.
READ MORE: Loganair pilot Rachel Gilmour flying flag for female pilots
At the same time, further challenges arose through delays in onboarding senior personnel which adversly impacted business performance. Despite a significant investment from the shareholder of £1.5 million in addition to the purchase price, these issues led to working capital requirements that were unable to be funded.
In a statement from the directors and shareholder, they said: “Our thoughts are with our dedicated team, as well as the students and RAF cadets profoundly affected by the closure.
"We are devastated that, after many months of tireless work, we have been unable to save this incredible business that has made Dundee an aviation hub for over 50 years. We will provide all assistance to the administrators in order to ensure our employees and cadets are treated as fairly as possible.”
READ MORE: Scotland beer: Brewery to close for good after 170 years
Mr Nimmo of Interpath Advisory said: “Clearly this is a disappointing outcome for everyone involved in this well-known and long-established business.
"Our priority is to assist those members of staff who have been made redundant, providing them with the information and support they need to claim their statutory entitlements from the Redundancy Payments Office at this very difficult time.”
Mr Jacobs added: “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. We will collate details of these parties from company records and include them within the list of creditors, whom we shall contact in due course to advise of the claim process.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here