Loganair

If you have already seen everything from Airbus and Boeing, Loganair is a reason to head to Scotland. The regional airline flies to islands that consist of just a few houses and a grass strip, lands on a sandy beach and operates the world’s shortest scheduled flight. At the same time, it is the most important airline on many British domestic routes. This page shows you how to recognize Loganair, what is in the fleet and where spotting is worthwhile.

Loganair at a glance

Loganair is a Scottish regional airline based at Glasgow Airport in Paisley. The story begins in 1962: the construction entrepreneur Willie Logan took over a small air taxi business and named it after himself. It began with a single Piper Aztec at Renfrew. In 1963 the first scheduled connection followed, from Dundee to Edinburgh, in 1967 the island flights on Orkney and a contract for air ambulance flights were added, and in 1970 flights in the Shetland Islands began.

For decades Loganair was often not even visible to passengers: from 1994 to 2008 the airline flew as a franchise for British Airways, and then as a franchise for Flybe until 2017. Only since September 2017 has it operated under its own name again – with a new look built on Scottish tartan.

March 2020 brought the biggest leap. After Flybe’s collapse, Loganair took over several routes that had become free, some of them after just a few days. By its own account, this made the airline the largest provider in British domestic traffic and the largest airline at Aberdeen Airport.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code LM: appears in the flight number, on the departure board and on the ticket.
• ICAO code LOG: appears in the flight plan filed with air traffic control and on most flight trackers.
• Callsign LOGAN: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

On codeshare flights, the same flight can additionally carry a BA or KL flight number. On the tracker, though, it stays LOG – that is how you see who is actually flying. How flight number and callsign relate is explained in the article Callsign vs. flight number, and the system behind the codes is covered in IATA and ICAO codes explained.

The fleet: from nine seats to a regional jet

Hardly any European airline has such a colorful fleet with so few aircraft. According to fleet overviews (as of April 2026), it looks roughly like this:

Type	Number	Seats	Use	Spotter note
ATR 42-500 / ATR 42-600	4 / 2	48	Regional routes, smaller airfields	Short fuselage, six propeller blades
ATR 72-600	10	72	Main routes in Scotland and domestic	Today’s standard type
ATR 72-500F	4	Cargo	Cargo flights	Older -500 generation, cargo only
Embraer ERJ-145	10	49	Longer domestic and European routes	Only jet, engines at the rear
DHC-6 Twin Otter	3	19	Barra, Tiree, Campbeltown	Fixed landing gear, high wing
Britten-Norman Islander	2	8	Orkney Inter-Isles	Piston engines, very small

The ATR 72-600 and the smaller ATR 42-600 form the backbone. Since late 2019, Loganair has increasingly brought turboprops from the manufacturer ATR into the fleet, replacing the Dornier 328, the Saab 2000 and most recently the Saab 340 – the last Saab 340s were retired in January 2024. So if you still have a photo of a Loganair Saab in your archive, you own a piece of history.

The Embraer ERJ-145 is the only jet in the fleet; the first examples arrived in 2019 from the then sister company Flybmi. It has little in common with the larger E-Jets such as the Embraer E175: a narrow fuselage, three seats per row and two engines at the rear of the fuselage beneath the T-tail.

Loganair flies the Twin Otter on routes that the Scottish government tenders as public service obligations, among others: from Glasgow to Barra, Tiree and Campbeltown. The two DHC-6-400s for these routes were acquired in 2015 by the airport operator Highlands and Islands Airports.

Two curiosities for your bucket list

Barra: landing on the beach

On the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides there is no paved runway. The airport uses the beach Traigh Mhòr as its runway – probably the only airport in the world where scheduled flights land on a tidal beach. Three sand runways are laid out in a triangle and marked at the ends with wooden posts. At high tide they disappear under water, which is why the timetable follows the tides. Loganair links Barra with Glasgow, flown with the Twin Otter.

For photographers it is a dream subject: a small propeller aircraft touching down on wet sand, with dunes and sea behind it. Plan your visit around the tide table and the timetable, and be sure to stay outside the marked runway areas as soon as an aircraft is expected. Barra rightly belongs on every spotter bucket list.

Westray–Papa Westray: the world’s shortest scheduled flight

On Orkney, Loganair has flown the so-called Inter-Isles connections between Kirkwall and several small islands since 1967. One section of it is famous: between Westray and Papa Westray there are only around 2.7 kilometers. The scheduled flight time is about a minute and a half, and with the right wind it is quicker – the record stands at 53 seconds. It is flown with a Britten-Norman Islander, a high-wing aircraft with eight passenger seats. Loganair operates the Inter-Isles flights on behalf of the Orkney Islands Council.

How to read weather reports is explained in the guide METAR and TAF for spotters. For the often gray days in the north, Plane spotting in bad weather is also worth a look.

How to recognize Loganair

Since returning to its own brand in 2017, Loganair has relied on branding with Scottish tartan. The pattern was registered in the Scottish Register of Tartans in March 2017. Loganair first showed the standalone paint scheme in April 2017 on a Saab 340 freighter. That makes the airline stand out immediately on the apron, even next to BA or easyJet aircraft.

The second clue is the type. If you see an ATR with a British registration at a Scottish airport, the chance of Loganair is high. For jets with rear-mounted engines and a length of only around 30 meters, think of the ERJ-145. Twin Otters and Islanders with Loganair titles only exist on the island routes anyway.

When photographing the turboprops, pay attention to your shutter speed: with too short an exposure the propellers freeze and the aircraft looks like a model. How to get visible propeller motion is shown in the article Photographing propellers.

Network and partners

Loganair does not belong to any alliance. It does have codeshares with British Airways and KLM as well as interline agreements with numerous other airlines, including (as of 2023) Aer Lingus, Air France and Finnair. That allows connections from the Scottish islands to the wider world. In 2023 Loganair also started flights from Shetland, Orkney, Derry and Dundee to London Heathrow; which of them are still in the schedule today is best checked in the timetable.

According to Loganair, the network extends beyond Scotland into other parts of the United Kingdom, to the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands and to Ireland, plus a few destinations on the European mainland. Further bases include Kirkwall, Dundee, Derry, Newcastle, Jersey, the Isle of Man and, since 2025, Southampton.

A close relative in business model is Widerøe in Norway: also regional flights to remote places, also short runways and plenty of weather. If you know both airlines, you understand how regional air service works in Europe’s far north. The counterpart is a group subsidiary like KLM Cityhopper, which mainly feeds one big hub.

Looking ahead

For some years Loganair has been working on low-emission propulsion. Announcements have included a hydrogen-powered Islander for Orkney, a partnership with Heart Aerospace for hybrid-electric aircraft and plans for electric aircraft from BETA Technologies for routes in the Highlands and on the islands. Whether and when these types will appear in scheduled service is open. For spotters that means: on the island routes there may be interesting prototypes and test flights in the coming years.

Common mix-ups

• Mistaking LM for a country code – LM is purely Loganair’s airline designator.
• Taking every ATR in Scotland for Loganair – other airlines also fly ATRs to Great Britain. Livery and registration decide.
• Confusing the ERJ-145 with E-Jets – the ERJ-145 is smaller, has engines at the rear and only three seats per row.
• Swapping ATR 42 and ATR 72 – look at the fuselage length in relation to the wing.
• Equating the codeshare number with the operating airline – a BA or KL flight can be flown by Loganair; the tracker shows LOG.
• Still expecting the Saab 340 in the schedule – the Saab was retired in January 2024.

How to assign individual aircraft cleanly via their registration is explained in Understanding aircraft registrations. You can find rare types like the Islander and Twin Otter more precisely with the tips from Spotting rare aircraft.

Conclusion

Loganair is the airline for spotters who look for something special. Instead of big jets there are ATR turboprops, a handful of regional jets and real island hoppers that land on sand or grass strips. If you know the codes, types and registrations, you can quickly place every sighting – and if you ever see a Twin Otter touch down on the beach at Barra, you will not forget it any time soon.