Obituary: David Coltman, businessman

Scottish airline executive who was as passionate about charity work as business

David Coltman, businessman.

Born: 5 August, 1942, in London.

Died: 9 June, 2011, in Haystoun, Peebles, aged 69.

DAVID Coltman was involved at the highest level of international airlines, other travel services and investment firms for more than 40 years. He served as chief executive of British Caledonian Airways, influential chief marketing officer of Chicago-based United Airlines and an executive for 15 years at British Airways.

More recently, he was chairman of the highly successful Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust (EWIT), managed by Baillie Gifford of Calton Square, Edinburgh.

In his early years, he worked for the big guns of the time -- British European Airways (BEA) and the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).

Later, he served on the boards of British Regional Airlines Group, John Menzies Plc, Menzies Aviation, the Galileo travel company, Opodo (Travel), Apollo Travel Services, the Dunedin Income Growth Investment Trust of Princes Street, Edinburgh, Eredene Capital. (which invests in infrastructure in India) and the now-defunct New York-based, business-class-only Eos Airlines.

It was a long and stunning list of achievements, but Coltman was happiest tending his sheep, cattle and gardens with his wife Mary, daughter of the late Scottish Tory politician and peer Willie Whitelaw, at their farm and small country estate at Haystoun in the Borders.

And his proudest achievements were not in board rooms but in his extensive charity work.

Until stricken by a debilitating illness more than a year ago, he was the extremely active chairman of St Columba's Hospice on Boswall Road, Edinburgh, which seeks to improve the quality of life for people with progressive, far-advanced diseases such as the one which struck Coltman himself.

As chairman, he was passionately involved in the hospice's 26 million expansion project, to turn what was originally a 15-bed facility in the Georgian Challenger Lodge overlooking the Firth of Forth into a state-of-the-art palliative care and education centre for patients and their families.

He helped push what became known as the hospice's "Buy a Brick" appeal to the public to finance the extra 7m needed to complete the project by 2014.

He also served on the board of Trinity House, the general lighthouse authority, the UK's largest maritime charity funded by its own endowments.

In 2005, he and his wife Mary gave use of a new indoor riding school at Crookston farm outside Peebles to the Tweeddale Group of the Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA), allowing disabled children to ride ponies to their hearts' content.

He and Mary were also enthusiastic and passionate supporters of contemporary Scottish art and opera. David served for a time as chairman of his local theatre, the Eastgate in Peebles, at a time when it was struggling.He played an important role in turning it around into the success it is today.

Among his other great loves was horseracing. He recalled selling off a family heirloom, a tiara, when he was 19 to buy a share in a racehorse with some friends.

More recently, he bred a few thoroughbreds in Ireland, including the bay filly Shady Sadie, trained by Rose Dobbin at South Hazelrigg, Northumberland, which came fifth in a race at Perth on the Sunday before he died.

Although he was born in London during the war, David Alexander Coltman's parents were from Ayrshire and he was very much a Scot. After attending Eton, he returned north to study chemical engineering at Edinburgh University but a chance chat with a successful businessman on a Glasgow to Edinburgh train pushed him to give up his studies and take the business route.

"You should never do a job you don't enjoy doing. That was his philosophy," said his only daughter, Susannah. "There was never a day when he didn't get up and rush off to work like an excited youngster."

In 1972, Coltman married Mary Cecilia Whitelaw, daughter of Willie Whitelaw, Margaret Thatcher's right-hand man who would become Viscount Whitelaw of Penrith.

In 1975, Mary inherited the Haystoun farm near Peebles and she and David, in between his frequent travels, built up its gardens of azaleas and rhododendrons, eventually adding their own small loch, all the time running a full-time cattle and sheep farm as well as a shooting and fishing estate.

The historic estate at the mouth of the valley of Glensax, including its 15th-century mansion house, survived a raging gorse fire just last month when firemen from the Lothian and Borders Fire Brigade fought for seven hours against the blaze amid high winds.

Coltman was chief executive of British Caledonian Airways, highly popular among Scots who flew regularly to London, before it was taken over by British Airways in 1987.

But his name became best known after he was appointed chief marketing officer of United Airlines and chief executive officer of the airline's holding company UAL Corporation in 1989.

While at United, he hit the headlines in Scotland for defending the Chicago-based airline over allegations that it was "cherry-picking" - using aggressive pricing to snatch summer trade between the UK and the US.

The American airline had been at the forefront of a campaign to break Prestwick's monopoly on transatlantic flights from Scotland.

Scotland on Sunday said at the time that Coltman was "ruffling feathers" at Glasgow Airport but he had the last laugh when he watched the dove-grey and blue livery of flight UA939 take off from Glasgow towards the Atlantic on 10 June, 1993.

Because of his UK contacts in the interwoven worlds of aviation and politics, Coltman was hugely influential in United Airlines' purchase of Pan Am's Heathrow operation in 1990, a move bitterly opposed by BA.Over the past few years, he was a vocal proponent of having the British Airports Authority (BAA) hand over control of Edinburgh Airport to local private ownership.

In a letter to The Scotsman on 2 September, 2008, he wrote: "The probable divestment of one of the lowland Scottish airports by the BAA provides a unique opportunity for the creation of a new Scottish international business in airport management.

"Rather than let another outside organisation take control of our capital's airport, we should ensure it passes into local ownership, where not only could it be responsive to the needs of the community, but it could also be the nucleus from which a new major global business can grow.

"Several significant airport management groups, such as Manchester and Vancouver, have developed from just such a beginning. The enterprise could inherit some excellent and experienced management from BAA Scotland, who would, I am sure, relish the challenge the opportunity offers."

David Coltman is survived by his wife Mary, daughter Susannah and brother Charlie.