Site updated 14th November 2009

Captain Ernest Edmund Fresson, OBE, was a the visionary airman who became a legend in his own lifetime for setting up the network of air services in the Highlands and Islands and operating them so successfully and profitably from 1933 onwards, that they increased prosperity and economic development to the entire region.
"Ted" Fresson (as he was known) not only founded Highland Airways Ltd in Inverness in spring 1933, beginning his first services to Wick and Kirkwall on May 8th that year, but he also opened the first airports at Wick, Kirkwall, Aberdeen, Sumburgh and Stornoway as well as those on the outer islands in the Orkneys.
His airline grew with the financial and engineering backing of Macrae & Dick Ltd (Inverness motor engineers), by a series of mergers, and nationalisation, in an unbroken line of succession that traces itself to the British Airways organisation of today.
And Ted himself was one of the finest and most skilful commercial pilots this nation has ever produced.
For amongst many other things, he founded the Scottish air ambulance services in the north, and usually flew the most dangerous missions himself, in all weathers, in day or night.
He also started the United Kingdom's first regular domestic air mail service at normal surface rates, between Inverness and Kirkwall on May 29, 1934.
Thus it was in his memory that The Fresson Trust was founded in the spring of 1991, with the help and encouragement of some well-known local personages.
The initial idea behind the Trust was to commission a bronze statue of Captain Fresson, to be erected at Inverness Airport in front of the passenger terminal, to commemorate the centenary year of his birth (1891).
The Trust put this project into motion, sought sponsors for the money involved, and completed its objectives with the unveiling of the statue on September 25, 1991.
Steps were being taken, meanwhile, to establish the Trust as a registered charity in Scotland, and this was finally accomplished on April 13, 1992.