British Caledonian in The 1980s - Reaching New Heights

Reaching New Heights

1984 was a record year for BCal. It ended the financial year to 31 October 1984 with a pre-tax profit of £17.1 million, which surpassed the record financial performance of 1978. This translated into a £10.9 million retained profit at group level. These profits were the result of improvements in the British economy, which had recovered from the severe recession of the early 1980s, and BCal beginning to reap the benefits of the new industrial relations strategy it had begun implementing the year before.

1984 also saw the arrival of two brand-new A310-200 widebodies at BCal's Gatwick base.

Moreover, that year the CAA awarded BCal a licence to commence scheduled services from Gatwick to Riyadh. It also authorised the airline to operate dedicated scheduled services to Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai and Muscat, rather than serving these destinations as intermediate points only.

Apart from Riyadh, Libreville was added to the network during 1984. At the start of the summer timetable period, frequencies to Frankfurt and Geneva increased to three daily round-trips. Connectair and RFG joined the British Caledonian Commuter scheme adding new, regional feeder routes from Gatwick to Antwerp and Paderborn. Connectair also assumed the operation of BCal's Gatwick—Brussels route. BCal furthermore decided to withdraw its Glasgow—Newcastle—Amsterdam regional service to focus its operations on providing worldwide scheduled services from London only.

BCal moreover decided to retire the four ex-Laker One-Eleven 300s and to acquire another second-hand One-Eleven 500, giving it a total fleet strength of 13. This enabled the airline to standardise its short-haul, narrowbodied fleet on the same aircraft sub-type, thereby enhancing its ability to interchange aircraft across that fleet. In addition, BCal decided to hush-kit the entire One-Eleven fleet to comply with stricter, post-1985 noise abatement rules.

1984 also marked the end of the long-haul, narrowbodied era for BCal when the last Boeing 707 left its fleet.

1985 was the year that broke all previous financial records at BCal. The pre-tax profit in the financial year to 31 October 1985 reached an all-time high of £21.4 million. The retained group profit for that period was £11.3 million. The profit attributable to BCal's airline operation represented an improvement of almost £12 million compared with the previous year's results. During that year, BCal carried 8% more passengers and 20% more cargo compared with the year before.

The limited route transfer on which BCal had agreed with BA and the Government took effect at the start of the 1985 summer timetable period, when BCal commenced scheduled operations from Gatwick to Dhahran and Jeddah, replacing the BA service from Heathrow. At the same time, BCal relinquished its traffic rights to Recife, Salvador, Rio, São Paulo, San Juan, Caracas and Bogotá. BA acquired these traffic rights and began serving most of these destinations from Heathrow.

A second 747 wearing BCal's full livery joined the fleet permitting the resumption of a daily service between Gatwick and New York's John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) during the summer of 1985, after the airline's absence from that route for over a decade. BCal's 1985 re-launch of scheduled Gatwick—JFK services coincided with the introduction of its door-to-door limousine service for premium travellers.

The temporary lease of a Viscount sporting the full BCal livery for the duration of the 1985 summer timetable period enabled the airline to increase capacity on the Gatwick—Brussels route by replacing smaller aircraft Connectair had used to operate that service under the British Caledonian Commuter scheme and to add more capacity on week-ends on the busy Gatwick—Jersey route.

Two more, second-hand DC-10-30s were acquired to replace BCal's A310s, which left the fleet when the additional DC-10s arrived.

1985 also saw the establishment of British Caledonian Flight Training, a new flight crew training facility.

As Gatwick became busier, BCal's senior management called on the Government to ban all charter flights from the airport and to move those services to Stansted.

The Government decided to meet BCal's request for a ban on all charter flights from Gatwick half-way by agreeing to give preference to scheduled services in all future slot allocations at the airport.