
Would you charter a private helicopter to Aberdeen's Scottish Cup Final at Hampden?
With Aberdeen's Scottish Cup Final tickets completely sold out – trains, buses and roads to Glasgow are set to be pushed to the limit on May 24.
Facing the stress of getting to Hampden Park, it might push some Dons fans to get creative in their travel plans to Scotland's spiritual home of football.
And with packed trains and gridlocked roads all expected – it might make some football fans wish they could fly to the all-important cup clash with Celtic.
But, can you?
That's where PDG Aviation Services come in – offering Dons fans the chance to be taken to their cup final seat in style.
They offer commercial flights from Aberdeen Airport to Glasgow 365 days a year – including on the day of the match.
They are no strangers to sport either, being previously called in for 'Super Saturday' in 2018.
On that day, they were tasked with delivering the Scottish League One trophy to winners Ayr United at short notice following a final day decider with Raith Rovers.
They have also been involved with the PGA to assist in the Ryder Cup and with various horse racing events in Scotland.
But, is it really a viable option for Aberdeen fans in a hurry to get to Glasgow?
We asked PDG sales manager Duncan McDonald, 57, everything about the alternative mode of travel for the big day.
We were told that fans could be lifted to the game in an Airbus B-BYZA.
The helicopter can carry up to eight passengers, and can take off from the majority of helipads in the country.
With the helicopter unable to land at or in the vicinity of Hampden, passengers will be dropped at the nearest heliport.
The nearest port is in Govan, with the second nearest being at Glasgow Airport in Paisley.
We asked how much it would cost to take three friends to the final on the day of the match.
PDG estimates quoted us £7,500 in total to take us down to the game.
Duncan said the price would vary depending on where people were taking off from, where they were landing and how many passengers there were.
No Dons fans have yet taken up the option to fly to the match, although 'there is still time.'
Fans of the club have flown to previous finals as well as to golf and racing events.
Meanwhile, 1990 Scottish Cup hero Hans Gillhaus has revealed why he missed his Reds Hall of Fame induction in January.
The Press and Journal has revealed plans for the Dutch icon to get up on stage alongside cup-winning skipper Alex McLeish, as well as ex-strike partner Charlie Nicholas, goalkeeping compatriot Theo Snelders and winning penalty scorer Brian Irvine next Thursday.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
'Bushiri leveller against Aberdeen galvanised season'
We asked for your favourite Hibs moment of a memorable first season under David what some of you said:Leo: It has to be Rocky Bushiri's last-minute leveller against Aberdeen. It totally turned the season around and saved Gray's I'd love to say Jack Iredale's winner in the derby, but Bushiri's equaliser against Aberdeen back in November totally galvanised the whole club and we didn't really look back. Just a minute earlier Aberdeen had gone 3-2 up in the 95th minute, we were on eight points from 14 games and they were going 26 points ahead of us. To then finish with just one defeat outside of Parkhead for the rest of the season is Being undefeated against Has to be the derby win at The 3-3 against Aberdeen is a good shout, that game said we can do something, but the Boxing Day derby win was my favourite.


Daily Record
5 hours ago
- Daily Record
Steve Clarke's Scotland goalkeeper options laid bare as 3 potential solutions for Liechtenstein emerge
The national team are without Craig Gordon, Liam Kelly, Zander Clark, Angus Gunn and Robby McCrorie through injury Scotland boss Steve Clarke faces a goalkeeping crisis ahead of the trip to Liechtenstein. The national coach goes into Monday's friendly without five goalkeepers. Craig Gordon, Liam Kelly and Zander Clark missed this squad through injury and then Angus Gunn and Robby McCrorie were injured in Friday's defeat to Iceland. Young Cieran Slicker came on and made his international debut, despite only making six club appearances, but struggled badly with Clarke admitting he had to throw him in too early. Slicker remains in the squad and young Bournemouth keeper Callan McKenna has also been called up. The former Queen's Park youngster has been training with Clarke's squad all week. Clarke is still looking to call up another goalkeeper and joked on Friday night that it will depend on who is not on the beach. Jon McCracken (Dundee) The Dundee keeper has already been in Scotland squads previously. The 25-year-old started the season brightly and was named in Clarke's squad for the Nations League double header with Poland and Portugal He knows what it is all about and wouldn't be fazed. McCracken has had decent Scottish Premiership exposure one the last couple of seasons. The only issue is McCracken's lack of recent game time in the last couple of months of the season. He finished the season on the bench as Tony Docherty went for Trevor Carson but still made 20 top team appearances. Nicky Hogarth (Falkirk) The Falkirk keeper would certainly be full of confidence. The 23-year-old has just come off back-to-back promotions with the Bairns and helped them into the Premiership. He has been a key for John McGlynn's side and played every league game in their Championship-winning charge. Hogarth has also had spells at Nottingham Forest and Rangers and has that big time mentality that would be required. The keeper is a reliable shot stopper. He is back in the country and has never hidden his desire to try and play for his country. Ross Doohan (Just left Aberdeen) The keeper has just left Aberdeen and is expected to return to first club Celtic this summer. The 27-year-old did make 18 appearances for the Dons as he filled in for the injured Dimitar Mitov. Doohan has the experience of being at Celtic and has had a lot of first-team action at the likes of Ross County, Dundee United, Tranmere, Ayr United, Forest Green Rovers and Pittodrie. He has also played for Scotland previously at under-21 level. Doohan is similar to McCracken as he didn't get much first-team football in the final month of the season because of Mitov's return. Also picked up a Scottish Cup winner's medal and played his part in the opening two rounds.


The Herald Scotland
7 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Malky Mackay on Hibs' £5m shot, training centre plan and Black Knights
Made up of the 15 mantras which turned the New Zealand rugby team into the most ruthless winning machine in winning sport, a yellow post-it note marks out a chapter entitled: 'No D***heads.' It's a rule of thumb Mackay has tried to apply to one of Scotland's biggest football clubs. The key to forging the culture which secured European football for the men, women's and under-18 teams at the end of a roller-coaster season. 'The final 10 days of the season were an incredible 10 days for the football club,' said Mackay. 'We were balancing the men's team going for third in the Premiership with the women's team going for the SWPL title and the under-18 team going for their league as well. 'All of it was balanced on a knife-edge. Were the men's team going to finish third or fourth or fifth? 'Were the women going to win the tightest title race ever or come second? 'And then the kids had three games in a week and that was always going to determine whether they were going to win the league or not. 'So now we have the three teams in Europe and I think Celtic and Rangers are the only other clubs who've achieved that in Scotland.' The loss of £5 million for automatic qualification to the group stages of the Europa Conference League should have cast a pall over Hibernian's season. When Aberdeen unexpectedly beat Celtic in the Scottish Cup final, they secured a prize expected to fall into the laps of the Easter Road club when they stormed from the bottom of the Premiership to secure a third-place finish. If Mackay has his way it still will. 'That £5m is still there for us,' he says. 'The outcome of the Aberdeen Celtic game changed things in terms of which team went straight into the group stages. But that wasn't something we could affect. 'All we could do was finish as high in the league as we possibly could. 'We did that by finishing third and I'm not certain what more we could do. 'Congratulations to Aberdeen, fair play to them for winning the cup. That's life. 'All you can do in this business is look after yourself. And we put an awful lot into what we achieved in the end.' Technical director of the Scottish FA for four years, Mackay now works tirelessly in pursuit of marginal gains at the Hibs Training Centre in Tranent. Plans for a new full-size indoor training dome and a new facility for the title-winning women's team are well down the tracks after a land swap deal at East Mains. Trailed at the club's AGM, the 20-year-old facility has become cramped and an 11-a-side indoor facility – a long-held goal of the late owner Ron Gordon – is planned with the financial assistance of SFA Pitching Up facility funds. 'There is a situation now our men and women's teams are sharing a building which is 20 years old and it has become too small,' Mackay admits. 'So we have sat down and developed plans for a potential redevelopment. Obviously we have to speak to East Lothian Council and put it all down properly, but we are hoping for a revamp of the area. 'We have the possibility of another building, extra pitches and the potential for an indoor full-size 11-a-side facility as well. 'We are high up altitude wise in Tranent and the wind does create issues here. Hibs manager David Gray (Image: Ross MacDonald - SNS Group) 'The difference it would make to the academy and community to be able to take players inside to a protected indoor-full size dome can't be overstated.' As a club Hibs are in a better place than anyone thought possible when David Gray's team couldn't win a game for love or money in the dark days of autumn. Bottom of the SPFL Premiership after one win in 12 games, the fourth managerial appointment in three years was fighting for his job. Chairman Ian Gordon was invited to Las Vegas for clear-the-air talks with multi-club investor Bill Foley and his Black Knight Football Club lieutenants Ryan Caswell and Tim Bezbatchenko following complaints that their input into key decisions was being ignored. 'I remember thinking, 'This has to calm',' admits Mackay now. 'My role was to make the place a stable ship and ensure that every message coming out of here is normal. What people expect. We had to become the club that we should be. 'There was a perception around the club where that wasn't necessarily the case.' An improbable 96th-minute equaliser from Rocky Bushiri in a 3-3 draw with Aberdeen in November proved a sliding-doors moment. After defeats to St Mirren and Dundee, when everything felt dysfunctional and chaotic, Hibernian rallied. They lost just one of the their next 14 games. 'People outside were seeing what was happening on the pitch,' Mackay says. 'I was seeing what was actually happened behind the scenes. 'We had a pretty imbalanced and bloated squad and we lost six games in the last five minutes. 'There were huge individual errors happening, we had four red cards in 12 games and we missed three penalties. 'No excuses but everyone could see that anything that could go wrong was going wrong.' The current average shelf life of a manager in the Scottish Premiership is 12.75 months. While five clubs will start the new season with a new head coach, Hibernian held their nerve and stuck with the one they had. While few knew how much stress Gray came under during the dark winter days of November, Mackay had been there himself. 'I've stood in those shoes. And the pressure in the role is incredible,' he notes. 'You are judged every Saturday on 90 minutes and until you stand in those shoes and see the pressure that comes from players, staff, owners, press and the public, you don't know how that feels. 'Back in the day when I was a young manager you got two or three years to do your job. 'These days you are lucky to get 12 months. The situation is getting worse.' The relationship with the Black Knights Group is now healthy, the two sides 'closer than they've ever been'. Read more: William Hill chief executive on why SPFL is undervalued in sponsor market Stephen McGowan: Is Dermot Desmond absentee landlord or Celtic mastermind? Black Knights president Bazbatchenko is a regular visitor to Edinburgh. Mackay has travelled to Bournemouth for meetings and Cherries performance director Jay Melette performed an audit of the Hibernian set-up. The Easter Road side will spend four days training with their English Premier League step cousins before playing a pre-season bounce game. The Black Knight representatives were as blown away as everyone else, meanwhile, by heartfelt renditions of 'Sunshine on Leith' after the wins over Hearts and Celtic. 'It's the 150th anniversary of the club's creation this year,' ponders Mackay. 'It all stemmed from the docks and the disadvantaged area of Leith and there is a great history attached to this club. 'The Gordon family have embraced that massively, ploughing something like £24 million into the club since the day they took over in terms of infrastructure and backing managers and training facilities to make sure everything is as good as it can be. They stuck at it through really tough times. 'So when I see the last few weeks of the season and the happiness around the club I think to back to some of the abuse they took during the hard times and think to myself, 'My god, they could easily have thrown the keys in'. 'That's why it's so satisfying to see fans singing 'Sunshine on Leith' or coming up to Ian [Gordon] and his mother Kit and thanking them for giving them memories to embrace. 'Over a period of time, Hibs is probably a club which hasn't won as many things as we could have. 'Because of the size of the fan base, the stadium, the facilities, the capital city aspect, people want us to light the touch-paper and catch fire. 'And I want Hibs to be a badge people are proud of instead of a club where they're looking in and saying, 'What's happening in there now?''