Channel Airways - History - The 1960s

The 1960s

During the early-1960s, East Anglian added several Douglas DC-3s as well as a single Douglas DC-4, quickening the pace of its fleet modernisation programme.

On 29 October 1962, East Anglian Flying Services officially changed its name to Channel Airways. (Although the Channel Airways name had first appeared on the company's aircraft as long ago as 1952, the old name was retained as the officially registered name until the somewhat similarly sounding Channel Air Bridge name became defunct to avoid any confusion.) By that time, Channel Airways operated frequent scheduled passenger and freight services from Southend, Ipswich and Rochester to the Channel Islands, Rotterdam, Ostend and Paris as well as from Portsmouth to the Channel Islands. The airline also held licences to operate vehicle ferry services from Bristol to Dublin, Cork, Jersey and Bilbao, as well as from Southend to Jersey and Bilbao. It furthermore applied for traffic rights to operate a vehicle ferry service between Liverpool and Dublin. Moreover, the company ran regular, 52-seat luxury express coach services linking Norwich with Ipswich as well as Eastbourne, Brighton, Worthing, London, Reading, Basingstoke and Guildford with Portsmouth. (There were also special coaches linking up with corporate shuttle services the company operated under contract to the Ford Motor Company between Southend and the airports serving the latter's continental plants.) In addition, IT and general passenger and freight charter services, which accounted for a growing share of the firm's business, were operated while rival Southend-based independent airline Tradair equipped with Vickers Vikings became a wholly owned subsidiary of Channel Airways on 31 December 1962.

In 1963, Channel Airways acquired its first turboprop airliner, a Vickers Viscount 700 series inherited from Tradair. That year also marked the beginning of the airline's large-scale expansion into IT charters from Manchester and Southend. This saw the operation of 71-seat Viscounts and a Douglas DC-4 in a high-density, 88-seat layout from Manchester and other UK airports to the Mediterranean and Ostend respectively.

The arrival of Channel's first turbine-powered aircraft coincided with the introduction of a new "Golden"-themed livery that was subsequently adopted for all Viscounts, HS 748s, One-Elevens and Tridents, with minor variations for each sub-fleet. This was one of the few marketing gimmicks in which the airline indulged and marked a major departure from its refusal to build a brand identity or to engage in prestige promotion to keep costs down.

By the mid-1960s, Channel Airways had acquired another nine Viscount 700s. Seven of these were former BEA aircraft while the remaining two were sourced from Bahamas Airways and Starways respectively. In addition to these aircraft, Channel also purchased 11 Viscount 812s from Continental Airlines and four new Hawker Siddeley 748s to support a rapidly growing number of IT flights and regional scheduled services along the UK's South Coast, between the South Coast, the Channel Islands and the Continent, as well as from Manchester Airport to continental destinations. The latter aircraft operated most of the airline's schedules serving the grass airfields. Although IT operations generated about half its revenues by that time, making Channel one of the UK's foremost contemporary charter operators, senior management preferred to think of it as primarily a scheduled carrier, keeping in mind their longer-term corporate ambitions to operate more domestic links from Southend and to extend the network's reach beyond the Channel coast and Paris to new destinations in Europe and North Africa.

Channel Airways received its first ex-Continental Viscount 812 at Southend in April 1966. The aircraft participated in that year's Biggin Hill Air Fair.

In September 1966, Channel Airways announced its first jet aircraft order comprising four BAC One-Eleven 400 series plus two options. That order was worth £5.5 million. These aircraft were the first jets to join the fleet, the first of which arrived at the company's Southend base on 15 June 1967. Nineteen sixty-six was also the year Channel arranged a 21-year lease on the grass field at Ipswich.

By May 1967, Channel Airways had taken delivery of the remaining Viscount 800s from Continental. By that time, it had also retired and sold the last 700s and placed a follow-on order for another two One-Eleven 400s.

In October 1967, Channel Airways ordered five Hawker Siddeley Trident 1E series jetliners for £8 million. These aircraft were dubbed Trident 140s and featured a 1,500 lb (680 kg) higher gross weight than other Trident 1/2 variants to make them suitable for European IT operations in a high-density seating arrangement. This gave them a range of 1,930 mi (3,110 km) with a full payload of 139 passengers seated at a 31 in (79 cm) pitch or 2,570 mi (4,140 km) with 100 passengers in a lower-density seating configuration. The latter brought the Canary Islands within the aircraft's non-stop range from the UK and West Berlin. These were the first Tridents ordered by a UK independent airline and the last five 1E series built. The arrival of Channel's first Trident at the airline's Southend base in May 1968 coincided with the delivery of its second One-Eleven. Channel's first Trident operated the airline's first revenue service with the type on 13 June of that year, when the aircraft departed Southend for Barcelona via Teesside, while the second example was displayed at the following month's Farnborough Airshow. Channel also took advantage of the Trident's higher cruising speed by promoting the type's 3 hour 15 minute non-stop flying time between Stansted and Las Palmas as the fastest flight from anywhere in the UK to the Canaries.

As Channel's new jets suffered range and payload restrictions at Southend due to its short runway and the introduction of the One-Eleven at the airport led to growing complaints about the aircraft's take-off noise, this resulted in Stansted becoming the main operating base in 1968.

Nineteen sixty-eight was furthermore the year Channel reduced its outstanding jet aircraft orders due to the difficult economic situation in the UK during that time, especially the sterling devaluation and a tightening of the existing exchange control regime that limited passengers to £50 a trip. This resulted in cancellation of three remaining orders each for Tridents and One-Elevens, and only two and three examples respectively joining the airline's fleet.

The introduction of these jet aircraft enabled Channel Airways to become a major provider of charter airline seats to the leading package tour operators in the UK from bases at Southend, Stansted, Bristol, Cardiff, East Midlands, Manchester and Teesside. Channel Airways also held lucrative contracts to carry package tour holiday makers from West Berlin to holiday resorts in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands on behalf of major West German tour operators. By 1971, these were worth £11 million per annum and involved more than 50 weekly departures from Tegel during the peak summer season. This had resulted in one of the airline's jets being permanently based there until its demise.

Channel's increasing dependence on the IT market made it a highly seasonal airline, with pronounced peaks and troughs in activity and aircraft utilisation. Each year, the end of the winter trough was followed by a six-week period of intense activity starting in April, when the company's aircraft were contracted by Clarksons to ferry British tourists to and from Rotterdam for the Dutch bulbfield season from ten UK departure points. The end of this season in mid-May also marked the beginning of the actual summer season, when the firm's planes commenced flying holidaymakers from the UK to Majorca, the Spanish mainland and Morocco under contract to the leading contemporary providers of package holidays in the UK. Flights to other Mediterranean resorts — chiefly in Italy and other Adriatic regions — started the following month. During the peak period in July and August, aircraft operated round-the-clock, plying scheduled routes during the day and serving IT destinations at night. The resulting increase in utilisation meant that aircraft spent as little as 40 minutes on the ground. By mid-September, the IT programme began winding down, with flights to Italy ending first due to its short holiday season. Flights to Majorca and certain Spanish mainland destinations continued right until the end of the summer charter season in late-October. To avoid having aircraft sit idly on the ground during the lean winter months, when ad hoc charters and a small number of year-round scheduled services replaced the intensive summer IT programme and busy summer schedule, spare capacity was leased out. In addition, all heavy maintenance was scheduled to take place during this period.

The rapid growth in Channel's IT business furthermore resulted in establishment of Mediterranean Holidays as its in-house tour operating subsidiary. This enabled the airline to take maximum advantage of the booming package holiday market while at the same time reducing its dependence on third party tour operators.

Channel Airways held the record for operating the UK charter airline industry's tightest seating configurations. For example, it managed to fit as many as 88 seats into its Douglas DC-4s, 139 seats into its Trident 1Es, as many as 99 seats into its One-Eleven 400s and as many as 83 and 56 seats into its Viscount 810s and HS 748s respectively. These were the highest-density seating configurations of any of the aforementioned aircraft types' operators.

Channel Airways also became known for pressing into service aircraft it had acquired second-hand with only minimal changes to the previous operators' aircraft liveries, i.e. merely taping over those operators' names with its own.

By the end of the decade, Channel Airways had established itself as one of the UK's leading, contemporary independent airlines, operating domestic and international scheduled passenger and freight services from East Midlands, Ipswich, Norwich, Stansted, Southend, Portsmouth and Bournemouth to the Channel Islands, Rotterdam, Ostend, Paris, Rimini, Palma and Barcelona. Between 1965 and 1968, it recorded annual profits in excess of £500,000. The Scottish Flyer was the name of a twice-daily multi-stop, bus stop type scheduled service Channel operated with modified, 69-seat Viscount 812s featuring a large baggage compartment inside the aircraft's cabin. This service ran for a brief period from January until November 1969 between Southend and Aberdeen, with six four- to five-minute long, engine-running intermediate stops, including Luton, East Midlands, Leeds/Bradford, Teesside, Newcastle and Edinburgh. (While the aircraft was on the ground with its two starboard engines kept running, passengers were required to load/unload their own baggage.) That year also saw a short-lived attempt to rename the airline as Air England; the new titles only appeared on a single Heron 1B.