Crew Charter Flights to Wick and Caithness

Caithness is the far corner of the mainland, and crews feel it. Aberdeen is 203 miles away by road on one planner's reckoning, Edinburgh is about 257, and the north of England is a full day. Meanwhile the county is hosting a decommissioning site, an offshore wind base and a run of grid projects, all of which need people to rotate in and out on a schedule.

This guide covers the practical case for a charter flight to Wick: what the airport requires, what the scheduled service does and does not give a crew, which aircraft fit, and how it compares with the road and rail. It sticks to what is public as of October 2026, and flags what we could not confirm.

Wick John O'Groats Airport: what a charter needs to know

Wick John O'Groats (EGPC) is a Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL) airport with one usable runway, 13/31, of roughly 1,830 metres on grooved asphalt. Wikipedia gives 1,831 metres. A pilots' club briefing sheet drawn from NATS data gives 1,825 metres. Two other runways are disused.

That is a proper runway. It takes a King Air, a PC-12, a Jetstream 32 or a light jet without the performance calculations that Highland strips such as Broadford demand. You are not limited to a short-field aircraft here, which is rare in this part of Scotland.

The rules that matter:

• PPR. HIAL's general aviation page says Wick is operated on a prior permission basis, with the form submitted at least three hours before arrival. Charter operators normally handle this, but check it is done.
• Handling. From 6 October 2025, all out-of-hours movements, except Wick-based aircraft, need ground handling through Far North Aviation. In-hours domestic arrivals under 3,000 kg maximum weight can self-handle. Heavier aircraft should assume they need the handler.
• Fuel. HIAL lists AVGAS and Jet A1 through Far North Aviation, which it says is open 24 hours.
• Hours. HIAL's pages do not state them. Third-party listings show weekday opening of about 10:30 to 17:30 UK time, a short Sunday window, Saturday closed and other times by arrangement. Older listings show 08:00 to 20:00. The scheduled Jetstream leaves at 08:00 on several weekdays, which sits outside the first set, so treat all of these as a starting point only. Confirm with HIAL and the UK AIP before you plan an early or late crew change.
• Approach. Sources disagree on instrument approach aids. Ask the operator for the approach they will use and the weather minima, and check NOTAMs, as HIAL itself advises.

Landing fees are in a HIAL charges document effective 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. We have not quoted them, so ask the operator for the figures with and without VAT.

Is there a scheduled flight to Wick in 2026?

Yes. Air Charter Scotland flies an 18-seat BAe Jetstream 32 between Wick, Aberdeen and, from mid-August 2026, Glasgow, under a public service obligation contract with Highland Council. Seats are limited and the timetable is thin.

The history matters if you are planning a long rota, because the service has changed hands repeatedly. Loganair flew from Wick from 1976 until its final flight on 27 March 2020. Eastern Airways took over the Aberdeen route on 11 April 2022 and stopped on 27 October 2025, when the airline ceased operations. Air Charter Scotland won an emergency contract and began flying in January 2026, first with a King Air 200, then a Jetstream 32 wet-leased from AIS Airlines of the Netherlands. We found no current Loganair service from Wick.

On 29 July 2026 the council announced a new contract with annual break clauses, running into 2030. Transport Scotland has confirmed funding only to 14 August 2027, about £1.78 million alongside £623,700 from the council. The council's own pages disagree on whether the new timetable starts on 15 or 17 August, so confirm on the operator's booking site.

The council's timetable shows the pattern:

There are no scheduled flights on Saturdays. Published fares at the time of writing: Aberdeen £79.99 standard one way, Glasgow £119.99. Those are public-service fares, and they are not what a crew change costs on a charter.

For a crew, the scheduled service is useful for one or two people on the right day. It does not suit a Monday-morning start from Aberdeen, since nothing flies Aberdeen to Wick on Mondays. A team of eight would also take nearly half the seats. Edinburgh was considered for the contract, but the council said suitable landing slots could not be secured.

Can you get a charter flight to Wick for a crew?

Yes, and the runway makes it easy on the aircraft side. The constraints are operator availability, aircraft positioning and weather, not the strip.

Aircraft that fit, with indicative market hourly rates from our small aircraft charter cost guide:

• Britten-Norman Islander (piston twin). Five or six crew with kit. Roughly £1,700 to £2,000 an hour on our working estimate. Islanders are based in the west and in Orkney, so expect positioning.
• King Air 200 or 350. Five to seven crew with kit. From about £1,400 to £1,800 an hour. Air Charter Scotland used a King Air 200 on the Wick route in January 2026, so the type is proven here.
• Pilatus PC-12. Five to seven crew with kit, with payload dropping on full tanks. About £1,600 to £3,400 an hour.
• Light jet. Four to seven people, quick on the longer legs from England. About £2,200 to £3,600 an hour. Fast, but poor value on a 40-minute hop from Aberdeen.

The full comparison of seats, payload and cost is in our crew charter aircraft guide.

Here is an illustrative sum, not a quote. A six-person change-over from Aberdeen, with the aircraft flying full in both directions, is about 80 nautical miles each way by our straight-line calculation from the airfield coordinates. Call it 1.5 to 2 flight hours in total. Across the turboprop and light jet range that is roughly £2,100 to £6,800, before positioning, handling, landing fees and VAT. A charter that waits at Wick for the day costs more, so build the rota around the aircraft flying full in both directions.

Air Charter Scotland, a Glasgow-based operator, is one name to ask, and it runs an executive charter arm as well as the scheduled service. Hebridean Air Services and Loganair also sell charter, and any operator should be checked against the CAA's air operator certificate list, as set out in our aircraft guide.

What work is sending crews to Caithness?

Four things, with very different timelines. Only the first two are steady.

Dounreay. The decommissioning site employed 1,367 people in 2024/25, according to the Nuclear Restoration Services socio-economic review. The review also reports £213 million of net expenditure, of which £117.7 million went through the supply chain. The 2022 breakdown counted around 700 supply-chain workers on site. The end-state date has moved repeatedly. A Highland Council planning framework assumes 2036, but we could not confirm the current official date, so do not plan around one. For contractors, it is a long-running destination rather than a surge. Dounreay is on the north coast west of Thurso, so a crew landing at Wick faces a drive of roughly 30 miles on our estimate. Check a live route planner.

Offshore wind at Wick Harbour. The Beatrice offshore wind farm (84 turbines about 13.5 km off the Caithness coast) is run from an operations and maintenance base on Wick Harbour, with around 70 full-time roles in Wick and a team of up to 90 overall. It is a steady, long-term user of the town and its beds. Moray East is often grouped with Beatrice, but its O&M base is at Fraserburgh, not Wick.

Grid. SSEN Transmission's Orkney to Caithness 220kV link includes a new substation at Dounreay West, where work began in summer 2025, with full energisation anticipated in 2028 (Project Scotland, November 2025). The Spittal to Peterhead 2GW subsea link has a main compound at Bower Quarry near Halkirk, with about 50 staff, according to an October 2026 update. Drilling at Sinclair's Bay is scheduled for late 2027. The Banniskirk Hub substation and converter near Spittal has planning consent (26 November 2025), but SSEN says preparatory ground investigations from 24 August 2026 are not the start of main construction, and gives no start date. The proposed Spittal to Beauly 400kV line is separate. Murphy is opening a Thurso office with up to 50 roles. For the wider picture, read our Highland grid projects guide.

Onshore wind. RWE completed the 36MW Camster II in April 2026, and its 62.7MW Golticlay site near Lybster was under construction with full operation expected by the end of 2026 (Scottish Construction Now). That points to a construction peak passing and maintenance taking over. We did not confirm the status of other Caithness sites, so we have left them out.

Where do crews sleep in Wick and Thurso?

Wick suits an airport or harbour job, Thurso suits Dounreay and the Scrabster ferry, and Halkirk sits between them. Beyond that, beds are the problem to solve before the transport.

SSEN's housing strategy puts its peak workforce at about 5,000 across the north of Scotland by 2027. It says hotels and short-term lets are used on a limited basis, so as not to displace residents. In Wick, SSEN and Highland Council are refurbishing 18 long-term empty homes on Wellington Street and Nicolson Street, which will house project workers first and then pass to the council (SSEN). A 500-bed workers' village in Thurso has been raised in letters to the local paper in September 2026. We found no planning application, so do not count it.

We found no reporting on hotel occupancy in either town, and we are not naming properties. For a rotation, ask each venue for a block rate across the whole programme, a named contact, and what happens to your rooms during peak tourist season. A hotel in a small town will usually prefer one block booking to a stream of single nights.

How do you reach Wick by road and rail?

By the A9 and A99 from Inverness, about 100 miles. Rome2rio gives 2 hours 12 minutes for the drive and about 4 hours 22 minutes by train. Treat both as planner figures. A loaded crew van behind a slow lorry in winter takes longer.

Transport Scotland removed the hairpin on the A9 at Berriedale Braes in 2020, which took out one of the old pinch points on the way north. Check Traffic Scotland before every crew change.

The Far North Line runs about four trains each way a day, with a reduced Sunday service, and reverses at Georgemas Junction. Timetables run to 12 December 2026. ScotRail replaced trains with buses between Dingwall and Wick from 7 to 29 June 2026 for engineering work, which shows the risk of a single-line dependency. For a crew carrying tools, a train is a poor fit.

Rotation options compared

The honest comparison depends on where your people start. Road times are planner estimates and charter distances are our straight-line calculations.

Road times assume no stops, and a coordinator would add rest breaks and a margin. Weather in Caithness is a factor for both modes: fog and low cloud can delay aircraft, and winter closes roads. The fallback logic in our disruption playbook applies.

What Sulu does for Wick and Caithness crews

We work out which aircraft and which day will actually work, then check it with the operator and the airport. That means PPR and handling arranged before the crew leaves, a back-up for the day the cloud sits on the runway, and beds in Wick or Thurso matched to the shift. The best intelligence available narrows the field, and then people who pick up the phone get it done. Our crew travel service covers the whole rotation, not only the flight.

Message us on WhatsApp or Telegram