Scotland Grounds Fisheries Planes Then Pays to Store Them

Scotland grounded both fisheries surveillance planes at the end of July 2025 and put the pair up for sale, saying drones would still catch illegal fishing. The two Reims-Cessna F406 Caravan II aircraft had flown from Inverness on daily patrols, including waters north of Shetland used by Faroese mackerel boats and EU vessels after Brexit.

A UK flying deal now offers 200 hours a year. The airframes are still with a contractor in Inverness, and loaned crewed sorties can take six days to get airborne.

The Inverness Cessnas Built to Hunt Mackerel Boats

Marine Directorate bought the made-to-order twins in 2008 and 2009 and fitted them with visible and infra-red cameras to record illegal activity at sea. Government pages used to say they were tasked daily. Together they averaged 450 hours a year, and more than 200 flying days.

One of them, G-SMMA, was later marketed as a 2008 Vigilant. The listing put time since new at 6,141 hours and 2,155 landings, with 1,859 hours still on both engines. Cabin layout is two pilots and one systems operator. Paint is yellow and blue with high-conspicuity orange tips.

WHAT G-SMMA STILL CARRIES

• Search radar: A Telephonics RDR 1500B in the nose for long-range maritime patrol.
• Night turret: A Teledyne FLIR Star Safire 380HD for day and night identification.
• Camera hatch: A factory hatch plus a Caledonian Airbourne maritime surveillance suite.
• Radios: Marine-band VHF/DSC and two satellite-comms fits for talking to ships and control.

That is the kit ministers now want a buyer to take. Tim Eagle, Conservative MSP for the Highlands and Islands and a former fishing spokesman, said the old system worked because Inverness crews knew where to look for boats breaking the rules.

Our fishermen have been badly let down by a government that does not take this issue seriously.

Tim Eagle, Conservative MSP for the Highlands and Islands

He called the change downgraded services. After reading the new hour count he added that planes which could have been flying the mission were sitting unused.

200 Hours a Year, With a Six-Day Wait

Then rural affairs secretary Mairi Gougeon answered Eagle on 10 December 2025. Funding, she said, had been made available through a new memorandum of understanding with the Joint Maritime Security Centre, in which the directorate pays £1,100 an hour plus VAT, which is £1,320 including VAT, based on a request to fly 200 hours a year. At that rate, 200 hours cost £264,000 a year including tax.

Two hundred hours is 44 per cent of the 450 the Cessnas used to fly, so crewed time has more than halved. The July 2025 deal also requires Scottish officials to request hours in writing. JMSC can take three days to consider a request, and it can be another three days before the aircraft are airborne. The UK government has first call on the planes.

THE OLD WATCH AND THE LOAN

JMSC is the UK government’s maritime security hub. Its operations centre is built for 24/7 monitoring of UK waters and for coordinating aerial and at-sea assets across departments, including Marine Scotland. That is a shared UK picture, not an Inverness pair waiting on a fisheries call.

The Marine Directorate’s own fleet page, updated on 2 March 2026, now says crewed aerial work since August 2025 is delivered through UKSAR2G, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency programme run with Bristow Helicopters. UKSAR2G is a ten-year search-and-rescue aviation contract that also covers reconnaissance and pollution work from fixed-wing bases including Prestwick. The JMSC hours and the Coastguard aircraft are two doors into the same UK pool.

Drones Launch From Hirta and Jura

Ministers say the hour count is the wrong test. A government spokesperson said the new mix includes crewed aerial surveillance and remotely piloted aircraft systems deployed from marine protection vessels, plus remote electronic monitoring on boats, and that this is evolution rather than a thinner service.

Since May 2025, drones launched from Hirta and Jura, the two big offshore patrol ships, have supported fishery control. The official note says they can fly beyond visual line of sight, and in darkness or low light. They leave the ship. They do not replace a land-based aircraft that can search north of Shetland while both ships are somewhere else.

The three-year drone contract, awarded to Nordic Unmanned UK Limited, is listed at £960,220.32 from 1 May 2025 to 30 April 2028. Tender papers asked for short and medium-range systems in 22-day units, aimed mainly at seasonal fisheries from March to November, from 12 nautical miles out to the 200-mile limit. Gougeon told MSPs the directorate had entered a contract that was saving a lot of money while keeping the overall resource. Finlay Carson, who convened the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, had already put the cash squeeze on the record: the directorate’s 2025-26 budget was down £3.4 million in cash, after a £4.8 million cut the year before.

Pelagic trawlers have had to record video on board since March 2026. The state now watches its own fleet more tightly from the wheelhouse, while the long-range hunters that used to look for unlicensed boats are in a hangar. That is a poor swap if the problem is a Faroese or EU vessel that is not on the camera mandate.

After the Planes Were Parked, the MPA Rules Began

The Offshore Fishing (Prohibition of Fishing Methods) (Scotland) Order 2025 set new gear bans across 20 offshore marine protected areas, from 12 to 200 nautical miles, with some overlap inshore. The measures took effect on 16 October 2025, after the Cessnas had already been grounded at the end of July. Five sites got full-site closures to damaging gear. Thirteen got zonal limits. Two, Central Fladen and East of Gannet and Montrose Fields, got tighter zonal maps after fresh advice from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. Ministers said trawling is now banned in 93.5 per cent of offshore MPAs.

THE SUMMER THE PLANES STOPPED

1. May 2025: Hirta and Jura begin flying short and medium-range drones on fishery control jobs.
2. July 2025: Marine Directorate signs the JMSC flying deal and identifies the aircraft sale as a cost saving.
3. 31 July 2025: The two F406s become available for sale and leave daily patrol.
4. August 2025: The directorate stops operating its own aircraft and points to UKSAR2G.
5. 16 October 2025: Offshore MPA fishing rules come into force.
6. 10 December 2025: Gougeon confirms the 200-hour rate and that both airframes are still with Airtask in Inverness.

Between 16 October 2025 and 20 August 2026, 36 boats were fined £140,000 for entering the protected areas: 28 fines of £4,000, six of £2,000, and two people fined twice at £8,000 each. They were caught on tracking systems, after the fact, for being inside a site below the six-knot speed line. None of those tickets required a Cessna overhead. None of them prove a boarding at sea either.

Open Seas, the environmental charity, said it was disappointed in the new flying deal and that its hopes for marine surveillance were already low. Enforcement, a spokesperson said, often arrives days after reports of illegal activity. On that reading, ministers are probably technically correct that cutting directorate flying would make little difference, unless the replacement is actually faster on the water.

Storage Bills Rose While the Sale Waited on a Foreign Permit

The cost-saving has a receipt. Scottish ministers went looking for a broker in June 2025 to market, manage and execute the two Reims Cessna F406 aircraft and their spare parts, including storage and maintenance until a sale. Directflight Limited, trading as Airtask Group, the firm that had staffed the aircraft with pilots, won the work. Gougeon’s December 2025 answer said the twins were on a maintenance and stowage contract and remained with Airtask in Inverness pending sale.

They were still unsold then. A modification notice published on 3 August 2026 said the brokerage contract was signed on 13 July 2026 at £587,897.35, then extended by a month for another £40,166.67. The extension was needed because the sale waited on equipment permission from the foreign government that supplied the kit. The planes built to watch Scottish waters were, by late summer 2026, still a storage job, held up by an export-style clearance on their sensors.

A government spokesperson said calculating average hours under each model was a false comparison, given remote electronic monitoring and drones, and that the change would not hit the directorate’s ability to protect Scottish seas. Eagle’s reply was that denials from ministers either missed the harm or did not care. Both can sit on the same page: the new tools exist, and the dedicated daily hunt from Inverness does not.

What Scotland Still Has on the Water

Crewed aircraft were never the whole watch. The directorate still runs ships, inshore boats, a monitoring centre and coast officers. What changed is the airborne piece that could go looking before a patrol vessel was already in the right square.

THE FLEET THAT IS LEFT

• MPV Minna: 48 metres, in service since 2003, crew of 15, top speed 14 knots, used mainly inshore. A replacement concept is in development.
• MPV Jura: 84 metres, 2,181 gross tonnes, in service from 2006, crew of 17, 18 knots, used mainly offshore, and now a drone launch ship.
• MPV Hirta: Same class as Jura, in service from 2008, also 18 knots, also flying RPAS since May 2025.
• RIBs Iona and Ailsa: 8-metre Delta HX inshore boats, 40 knots, crew of three, seasonal around the mainland and islands.

Those hulls can still stop a boat they can reach. They cannot be over the horizon north of Shetland on a morning’s notice the way the F406s were. The drones extend the two big ships, and UKSAR2G can still put a Coastguard aeroplane over UK waters when the shared roster allows. The six-day request clock remains the crewed-fisheries reality written into the JMSC deal.

G-SMMA’s listing was later marked off market, which is not the same as sold. In December 2025 the airframes were still in Inverness. In August 2026 the broker contract was lengthened again because a foreign government had not cleared the equipment. The Cessnas that used to hunt mackerel boats are still waiting on a buyer, while the hours Scotland now pays for can be queued behind someone else’s job.