British Airtours - History

History

BEA Airtours was formed on 24 April 1969 as a division of BEA to provide it with a low-cost platform to participate in the then rapidly growing IT holiday flights market, which until then had been the exclusive domain of wholly privately owned, independent airlines. BEA saw this as a necessary counterweight to the independents' rapidly growing scheduled activities that began encroaching on what the state-owned corporations, i.e. BEA and BOAC, had traditionally regarded as their sole preserve. BEA Airtours' formation was also in line with one of the recommendations contained in the Edwards Report.

The independent charter airlines were suspicious of BEA's motive to enter the IT market and thought that there was a hidden agenda to destabilise this market by undercutting the independent carriers, none of which could match the corporation's financial resources and access to capital at the time. The independents moreover thought that BEA Airtours was meant to take on the corporations' excess staff as well as to absorb aircraft that were surplus to their requirements. They feared that this would lead to significant market distortions, creating excess capacity and further depressing the already low charter rates in a highly competitive market.

Commercial airline operations commenced from London Gatwick in 1970 with a fleet of seven second-hand ex-BEA de Havilland Comet series 4B aircraft seating 109 passengers in a single-class configuration. The first revenue flight departed Gatwick on 6 March 1970.

In 1971, BEA Airtours had decided to replace the entire fleet with a similar number of larger capacity, longer range and more fuel-efficient ex-American Airlines Boeing 707-123Bs to enable it to commence non-stop, long-haul charter flights, including "affinity group" charters to North America. Despite having obtained permission from the UK's Department of Trade and Industry to import second-hand 707-120Bs and the non-availability of "internally sourced" alternatives (BOAC's 707-436s) within the envisaged timeframe, both corporations opposed this decision. They insisted that any new aircraft should be exclusively sourced from the existing BEA and BOAC fleets.

Following the corporations' intervention, BEA Airtours acquired seven former BOAC Boeing 707-436s. These aircraft had a greater seating capacity than required and were powered by four Rolls-Royce Conway engines, an older generation engine type than the four Pratt and Whitney JT3D turbofans which powered the ex-American 707-123Bs it had originally selected to replace its Comet fleet. This meant that the ex-BOAC 707s had higher operating costs. However, BOAC was prepared to sell these aircraft to BEA Airtours at a lower price than American was asking for its planes. The £4.3m sale price included BOAC's entire spares holding (inclusive of engines) for the seven aircraft. This helped compensate for the cost differential. The first of these 174-seat aircraft entered service in 1971 while the last aircraft of this batch joined the fleet in 1973. By that time, four of the airline's nine Comet 4Bs had already been withdrawn from service and sold to rival UK charter airlines.

The oil crisis in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, which led to a quadrupling of the price of a barrel of oil, substantially increased the operating costs of the remaining fuel-thirsty Comets and began to have an adverse impact on the airline's financial performance.

British Airtours, as the airline had become known following the creation of British Airways in 1974 as a result of the 1972 BEA—BOAC merger, therefore decided to retire its remaining five Comets at the end of that year's summer season and to sell the entire fleet to Dan-Air.

In 1975, British Airtours commenced transatlantic Advance Booking Charter (ABC) flights to the United States.

Over the coming years, British Airtours acquired additional Boeing 707s British Airways had inherited from BOAC.

When British Airways decided in the late-1970s to replace the aging and increasingly inefficient short-/medium-haul Hawker Siddeley Tridents and BAC One-Elevens it had inherited from BEA with state-of-the-art Boeing 757s and 737s, a follow-on order for nine brand-new 737-236 Advanced aircraft was placed with Boeing. These aircraft, which were delivered to British Airtours' Gatwick base during the early-1980s, allowed it to replace all of its old, second-hand narrowbodied planes with brand-new equipment, thereby considerably enhancing its competitiveness vis-à-vis its independent rivals.

In late-June 1982, British Airtours launched twice-weekly scheduled services between Gatwick and Newark using Boeing 707s in an all-economy configuration. However, the airline's foray into the transatlantic scheduled market ended after only seven months in early-January 1983.

In 1984, British Airtours took delivery of a Rolls-Royce RB211-powered Boeing 747-236B "jumbo" at Gatwick, its first and only brand-new widebodied aircraft. This aircraft was put into service on the airline's popular, long-haul ABC flights to North America. The same year, British Airtours' last Boeing 707 made its final revenue flight.

In the meantime, British Airtours also began taking delivery of a small number of former British Airways Lockheed L-1011 Tristar widebodies, which initially supplemented its narrowbodied 737 fleet on the busier and more popular routes.

In 1985, British Airtours introduced a new livery that closely resembled the one used by British Airways at the time (designed by Landor Associates).

British Airtours adopted the popular Caledonian Airways brand in April 1988 when the newly privatised British Airways had completed the takeover of its former Gatwick-based rival British Caledonian. It also adopted a modified BCal livery adapted from the contemporary, Landor Associates designed British Airways livery. The newly renamed Caledonian Airways moved its Gatwick operation from the airport's South Terminal into the then brand-new North Terminal, thereby concentrating most of the British Airways group's Gatwick services in the new terminal.

Caledonian Airways began replacing its Boeing 737 narrowbodies with additional ex-British Airways L-1011 Tristar widebodies as well as with a number of brand-new Boeing 757s sourced from the large 757 orders placed by its parent company. The former British Airtours 737s were re-configured in British Airways' contemporary short-haul two-class cabin arrangement and began replacing the BAC One-Eleven 500s British Airways had inherited from British Caledonian on the UK flag carrier's short-haul Gatwick routes.

In 1995, British Airways decided to exit the short- to medium-haul package holiday market and sold Caledonian Airways to UK-based tour operator Inspirations, then part of the US-owned Carlson group, along with its core fleet of five Tristars. Following Caledonian's sale to Inspirations, the 757s were returned to British Airways.

Inspirations became part of the Thomas Cook group in 1999 when Caledonian Airways was merged with the Flying Colours airline to form JMC Air Services, which in turn became the UK arm of the present day Thomas Cook Airlines.

Following Inspirations' takeover by Thomas Cook, the former Caledonian Airways Tristars were withdrawn from service as these had suffered increasing, widely publicised reliability problems resulting in the travelling public's generally poor perception of Caledonian.