Soft landing for bad boy of the skies

THE man several thousand airline passengers spent last summer cursing, leans back in his boardroom chair, raises a hand to his neck and makes a slashing, cut-throat gesture with his fingers.

It's Tom Dalrymple's telling response to one of the worst years he has ever suffered, a grim period in which the airline he runs slump-ed from award-winning budget service to rock bottom, when complaints poured into the Colinton Village headquarters faster than harassed staff could answer the phones and his firm's planes sat, broken and grounded, on Tarmac across the Atlantic.

Internet forums buzzed with disgruntled passengers' rage, BBC TV's Watchdog came looking, and Tom - a workaholic who began in the travel industry as a 3-a-week office junior and soared upwards to become the owner and chairman of a 120 million Edinburgh-based business - dreaded what each day would bring.

"Yes, it's been a very tough year," he nods glumly, remembering how what had started off as an exciting new adventure - taking his low budget FlyGlobespan flights on a 600m push into America - rapidly turned into a nightmare. "We just had to try to fight it all summer long, doing our best, knowing it was coming to an end. But it has been hard, very hard."

Launched with a fanfare in June, it was to be the first long-haul flight network centred on Scotland, with planes to America, Canada and eventually, he hoped, beyond. But soon Tom came to dread the ringing of the phone in the small hours at the countryside retreat in Midlothian he shares with his wife Anne. For invariably it meant another miserable episode of mechanical problems, cancelled services, rerouted flights and, for every plane affected, several hundred hacked-off and extremely vociferous passengers.

Suddenly FlyGlobespan - cheap, cheerful and quirky thanks to a cheesy TV ad featuring singing and dancing real-life jolly cabin crew - had become the bad boy of the skies, a budget airline that couldn't seem to actually get off the ground. And even though he puts the blame on a bout of devastating bad luck - in particular, two leased planes which suffered a string of mechanical failures - Tom knows better than anyone the gaping wound it has inflicted on the company.

"There's a big passenger confidence problem," he concedes, acutely aware that his firm's appearances on national television's Watchdog consumer show in recent weeks won't exactly have had holidaymakers fighting over his 2008 brochures.

"The delays in summer were not enormous but were frequently 24 hours if it happened in Canada, always on this side of eight to 12 hours on this side of the Atlantic. But it has affected a large part of our new market. Against all that, though, you've got to remember we are carrying 2.2 million passengers and the number affected is maybe 30,000."

He claims the troubles have been ironed out now, but the ripples are still being felt. And one of the most drastic consequences of a summer of discontent is 62-year-old Tom's growing realisation that the time has come for him to lessen his grip at the helm. Gradually over the next few years, FlyGlobespan will evolve from a largely one-man band - from its inception Tom has been its sole shareholder - to a firm run by a newly expanded board and with employees as shareholders. "Until now, the idea of all that has been pain-ful," he nods, hours after confirm-ing the appointment of a new chief executive, former Direct Holidays managing director Rick Green.

"It's easier now because it's become so large. Now I realise my personal influence has to be limited. If we want to grow, we have to look at outside shareholders."

But letting go isn't easy for a self-confessed control freak who has spent his life chiselling his way to the top. The only son among three girls, he was raised happy but far from well-off in a two-bedroom house in Redhall - not far from the secluded Colinton former mill which is FlyGlobespan's operational hub.

It was, he says, a wonderful childhood. "We were right in the country, all wee gangs of lads and lassies running around, making things for yourself. It was just after the war, there was still rationing and there wasn't a lot of money. We lived in a pre-fab, there was no insulation, and in winter there would be sheets of ice on the windows. But it was still a nice environment to grow up in."

School was less idyllic, however. He went to St Cuthbert's Primary where he recalls many raps over the knuckles by irritated teachers. By the time he arrived at Scotus Academy on Corstorphine Hill, he had been "parked" in the education system, as a low achiever. "I was put down as thick. I left at 16 with no qualifications but still felt I could do something."

It was only years later, during a chance conversation with a fellow passenger on a flight to Canada, that he first heard the word "dyslexic". Tom recalls: "He was in the medical profession. He showed me a technique of speed reading I still use. What he told me transformed my life."

Having been turned down for many jobs, he was finally offered 3 a week as office assistant with Mackay and Sons travel shop in Hanover Street in 1961. He fell in love with the "romance" of travel and worked his way through the ranks to become managing director by the age of 30.

He launched Globespan as a travel agency in 1974 and pounced in the aftermath of 9/11 in 2001, snapping up landing time slots vacated during a downturn in the aviation industry to launch his budget airline. Which took off to plan. It

snapped up awards for its customer service and was last year enjoying turnover of 120m and 1.7m profits. But that was then.

Today Tom is keen to draw a line under a summer season he'd rather forget. Now he is looking forward to finding time to sail his yacht - called Liberte - and going on long walks with his sisters.

But while he might be gently taking his foot off the pedal after a poor summer, there's one thing he'd like to clarify. He's not going away. "Retire? Oh no, hopefully I'll never retire," he declares, shocked at the notion. "Why would I? This isn't work - I love it too much."

FUTURISTIC FLYING

LAUNCHED in 2002, FlyGlobespan - based in the former Scott's Porage Oats mill in Colinton - now employs 1500 people and flies to 21 European destinations. The company operates 20 aircraft, mostly leased from other companies.

It was the first UK airline to fly aircraft with wingtips which were slightly curled at the edges, a design feature which has cut seven per cent from its fuel bill.

Within the next two years the company will take delivery of futuristic "plastic planes", made from a carbon fibre composite material that will replace heavier aluminium and help iron out the risks of metal stress fatigue. They will be powered by fuel-efficient Rolls Royce engines which produce lower levels of CO2 than conventional engines.

However the firm has been dogged by recent problems. Two planes leased to provide the transatlantic service last summer suffered major mechanical faults - with a knock-on effect on the company's other flights. It led to a two-week suspension of one its ETOPS licence, which lets it fly twin-engined aircraft over large expanses of water. .

The Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that on October 30, a Flyglobespan plane flew across the Atlantic to the US without all the appropriate safety equipment on board.