Ayr United chiefs fly to World Cup via Iceland and Greenland

Ayr United’s chairman and vice-chairman turned a World Cup trip into an exercise in endurance, crossing the Atlantic in a single-engine Cirrus SR22T with stops in Iceland, Greenland and northern Canada. David Smith and Fraser MacIntyre used MacIntyre’s aircraft, nicknamed Ayr Force One, to reach Scotland’s matches in the United States, taking a route that owed more to persistence than comfort.

Smith and MacIntyre sit at the top of Ayr United FC’s boardroom, with Smith as chairman and MacIntyre as vice-chairman. The same plane has been used for previous Ayr United away trips, and it carried the pair to the Euros in Germany four years ago, giving the aircraft a growing place in the club’s travelling folklore. The journey underlined how closely some club figures follow their sides, even when the route demands a string of remote stopovers rather than a straightforward commercial flight.

Their trip came as Scotland returned to the World Cup for the first time since 1998, ending a 28-year absence. FIFA said Steve Clarke’s side booked its place with a dramatic 4-2 win over Denmark in November 2025, a result that sent the national team back to the tournament and triggered a surge of travel among supporters.

The scale of that support has been most visible in Boston, where thousands of Scotland fans have descended for the tournament and the city has been described as a temporary Mini Scotland. Scotland’s first-stage fixtures included Haiti v Scotland in Boston, Scotland v Morocco in Boston and Scotland v Brazil in Miami, three games that have given travelling fans a defined base on the east coast before the tournament moves south.

Against the polished machinery of global sports travel, Smith and MacIntyre’s journey stood out for its improvisation and stamina. A single-engine propeller plane, a chain of Arctic and sub-Arctic stopovers, and a shared habit of following Ayr United wherever possible turned the crossing into a story of devotion as much as logistics. In a World Cup built on scale and spectacle, their route looked old-school, determined and unmistakably fan-first.