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Airtours Plc

Airtours Plc is one of the largest integrated tour operators and travel agents in the European and North American markets. Based in England, where the group is the second largest holiday package vendor after Thomson Travel Group, Airtours has been expanding rapidly in the late 1990s, achieving leading tour and travel positions in the Scandinavian, German, Dutch, French, and Belgian markets, while also building a strong position in the United States and Canada.

Airtours' operations are divided into three areas. The first is the company's holiday tour package sales, represented by the Airtours and other brand names, including Spies in Scandinavia; Sunquest Vacations in Canada; Suntrips in California; Sun International SA in Belgium; Direct Holidays, a direct sales package seller in the United Kingdom; and others, such as the company's 1998 additions of Frosch Touristik in Germany, Panorama Holidays in Ireland, and Vacation Express, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Added to the company's tour operations is Airtours' own network of nearly 800 travel agencies under the Going Places brand name in the United Kingdom. Since the mid-1990s Airtours has been building operations in a new area: cruise lines. In 1998 the company counted three cruise ships in its possession, carrying more than 90,000 vacationers to more than 40 ports. A fourth cruise ship was expected to be added in 1999. Supporting Airtours' activities is a solid infrastructure that includes not only company-owned resort and other hotels, but also the company's own charter airline. The company operates a fleet of some 20 airplanes, ranging from Airbus A320s to Boeing 767s.

Airtours continues to be led by founder David Crossland. A public company listed on the London stock exchange, Airtours is partly owned by the United States' Carnival Cruise Lines, the world's leading cruise line operator, which bought up nearly 30 percent of Airtours in 1996. After rising to the top of the British tour market in the 1990s, Airtours has been actively participating in the ongoing consolidation of the international tour and travel industry, as well as expanding into new markets. Already boasting a string of acquisitions, in December 1998 the company floated a convertible bonds issue, boosting its war chest by more than £250 million.

From Travel to Tours in the 1970s

David Crossland entered the travel business by a side road in the early 1960s. After leaving a self-described "mediocre" school career at the age of 16, Crossland sought work in hospital management. Crossland's lack of qualifications, however, prevented him from finding work in this field. Instead, Crossland found a job stamping brochures for a local travel agent. That job turned out to be an eye-opener for Crossland. As he told the Financial Times: "It was super leaving school and this was a marvelous opportunity, lots of colorful brochures and different places. It was like someone had opened the door and there was this big, shining light."

The shining light proved to be Crossland himself. After only three months, he added salesman's duties, selling holidays for the agent. Crossland turned out to be a natural salesman, with a knack for recognizing his customers' needs--a quality that would come into play strongly in his later career. Crossland's career received its next boost in 1971, when he met a couple preparing their retirement who were looking to sell their two Lancashire travel agencies. The couple offered to sell to Crossland, who jumped at the opportunity. "To this day, I don't know why I didn't say I had no money," Crossland told the Financial Times.

Buying the travel business would cost Crossland some £11,000. The agencies' owners themselves loaned Crossland £4,000, and Crossland sold a one-third share to his sister for £3,000. The remaining £4,000 came from Barclays Bank. Crossland quickly began earning back that loan--by the time he had signed the papers, he had sold a holiday package to the bank's manager. In 1972 Crossland took over Pendle Travel Services Ltd. It would take Crossland only nine months to pay off his company's debts.

Crossland proved to be not merely a good salesman, but a good manager as well. Over the next decade, Crossland sought out more travel agents who were looking to sell their agencies to retire. By the end of the 1970s he had built a chain of 12 travel agencies. Yet Crossland's ambitions would lead him into a vast expansion over the decade to come.

"Serious Business" in the 1980s

Despite Crossland's success, Pendle remained a relatively small company. A new inspiration in 1980, however, would lead the company into a new era. In that year Crossland recognized an opening in the tour packages industry. "I could see that passengers were coming in and asking for products that the tour operators weren't manufacturing," Crossland told the Daily Telegraph. "They weren't listening to the customers so in the 1980s we started a tour operation."

The opening Crossland spotted was in holiday packages for his working class customers. Whereas most tour packages at the time were being offered on a Wednesday-to-Wednesday basis and, therefore, were not easily adapted to customers' vacation schedules, Crossland began designing Saturday-to-Saturday tours. The shift to the weekend made all the difference. In 1980 Pendle would take some 900 customers on holidays to Malta. By the following year, that number would grow to more than 23,000, and the company began offering a choice of destinations. By 1983 Crossland's tour operation--created as a separate division dubbed Pendle Air Tours--had expanded the company to 23 agencies and more than 200,000 tour customers per year.

Until then, Crossland had led Pendle Travel Services as an entrepreneurial concern. But in the mid-1980s Crossland recognized his own limits and the limits of entrepreneurship. As he told the Financial Times: "I can remember thinking, 'I haven't got the capability to work any more hours, so if I want to expand the company, I'll have to find people with business disciplines I don't have.' In my own mind that was one of the turning points for the group, changing from a one-man entrepreneur into a serious business."

Crossland began recruiting a management staff, bringing in former executives from such firms as Marks & Spencers, Kellogg's, and Granada. The new team began reshaping Pendle from its former travel agent business to a full-fledged tour operator. By 1986 the company's tour business had become the primary source of revenues and growth. In that year Pendle sold off its 25 Pendle travel agency chain stores, and renamed itself Airtours, concentrating solely on its booming tour package operations.

Airtours continued to expand rapidly in the late 1980s. Fueling this expansion was the company's listing on the London stock exchange in 1987. The public company, and Crossland in particular, would be credited with bringing a new level of professionalism to the traditionally volatile travel business. Airtours also would prove adept at discovering new travel niches. In 1990, for example, Airtours launched its EuroSites brand of self-drive camping holidays. In keeping with the popular European-style camping holiday--where a "camping" often resembles a small resort more than a simple campground, complete with restaurants and recreational facilities--a EuroSites holiday offered a tent or mobile home rentals, as well as a choice of location in England, Holland, Germany, Denmark, and other European continent countries. The EuroSites concept proved to be a hit, bringing Airtours to one of the leading positions in that segment.

Vertically Integrated Travel Giant in the 1990s

The 1990s would see Airtours transform itself from tour package operator to a vertically integrated holiday provider. The company took an important step toward this transition in March 1991, when the company launched a new division, Airtours International, offering charter flights on the first of a soon-to-expand company-owned fleet of airplanes. The addition of Airtours International would help propel Airtours to the U.K. lead in the air-inclusive tour operators segment.

The following year Airtours reentered the travel agency business with the acquisition of Pickford Travel Agencies and that company's 330 travel agencies in the United Kingdom. The return to retail travel sales enabled the company to move closer toward vertical integration--a move that would be completed as the company began to acquire its own resort and hotel locations.

The troubled travel industry of the early 1990s--hit by the triple blow of overcapacity, traveler fears arising from the Persian Gulf War, and the recessionary economic climate&mdash′ovided fresh opportunities for growth for Airtours, as the company began seeking out more acquisitions. In 1993 Airtours bought Aspro, Ireland's largest tour operator and the number seven ranking tour operator in the United Kingdom as a whole. The Aspro acquisition also extended Airtours' airline activities, as it included Aspro's Inter European Airways subsidiary.

At the time that the Aspro acquisition was made, Airtours also purchased the Hogg Robinson Travel Agency and its chain of 214 retail stores. At the end of 1993 Airtours combined the Hogg Robinson and Pickford travel agent chains into a single operation, renamed Going Places. Further acquisitions would build the Going Places chain to more than 700 stores before the end of the decade.

These acquisitions would prove to be only the first of many more to come, as Airtours began seeking expansion beyond its U.K. base, as well as a diversification of its product offerings. After buying up Tradewinds, the leading long-haul tour operator in the United Kingdom, in December 1993, Airtours turned to a new market opportunity. With the purchase of the MS Seawing, Airtours entered the growing cruise ship market. By 1995 the company had added a second liner, the MS Carousel, and had launched its fly-cruise holiday packages.

The company's international expansion began in earnest in 1994 with the acquisition of Sweden's Scandinavian Leisure Group AB (SLG), which included not only that company's Ving, Saga, and Always tour brands, but also SLG's 50 percent ownership of Premier airlines, the largest charter airline operator in the Scandinavian countries. In addition to giving Airtours SLG's tour and airline operations, the acquisition placed SLG's Sunwing Hotel Group under Airtours' wing, giving the company a number of resort hotels in popular holiday destinations such as Majorca, Spain. Capping 1994, Airtours acquired a new retail operation in the form of Late Escapes, a teletext-based direct sales holiday provider.

After launching its cruise line operations in 1995, Airtours turned its attention to North America, purchasing Sunquest Vacations and Silverwing Holidays, two prominent Canadian-based holiday providers. These would be followed in 1996 with a move to consolidate Airtours' position as the leading tour operator in Scandinavia with the acquisition of the tour operators Spies and Tjaereborg, the hotel group Stella Polaris, and the acquisition of full control of Premier airlines.

Airtours' strong growth and its rapidly expanding cruise ship division, which was reaching more than 75,000 passengers per year, caught the eye of others in the travel industry, in particular the United States' Royal Caribbean Cruises, the largest cruise line operator in the world. In April 1996 Royal Caribbean became Airtours' leading shareholder with the purchase of 29.54 percent of the company's stock. The purchase sparked rumors of a possible takeover bid by Royal Caribbean; a possibility that neither side could discount completely for the future. Meanwhile, the shareholding position provided the basis for a partnership between the two companies, including the sale of one of Royal Caribbean's cruise ships to Airtours, which renamed the ship MS Sundream.

If the mid-1990s presented a difficult market, with increasingly consolidated, global competition sparking a price war that cut deeply into the company's profits, the second half of the decade would show impressive growth in Airtours. From revenues of £1.7 billion in 1995, the company would reach more than £3 billion by 1997.

Among the company's acquisitions during the period were the joint venture purchase with Royal Caribbean of Italy's Costa Cruises, which held the lead in the Mediterranean market and the number five spot worldwide; the acquisition of Northern California's Suntrips tour operator; and the 1998 acquisition of Sun International SA, bringing the company into the Benelux and French markets, as well as strengthening Airtours' short-break holiday business in the United Kingdom.

Airtours would show no sign of slowing down its expansion through 1998. After the Sun International purchase in February of 1998, the company would add a new cruise ship to support its booming cruise division, before moving into the German market with the purchase of a 30 percent stake in Frosch Touristik. By the end of September, Airtours had further strengthened both its U.K. and U.S. presence, with the acquisitions of Panorama Holidays in Ireland and Vacation Express in Atlanta, Georgia.

Under Crossland, Airtours promised continued growth for the future. After moves in December 1998 to move into the Polish market, under the Ving brand name, and the extension of the company's U.K. travel agency division with the purchase of the 116-outlet Travelworld, Airtours showed its hand with the launch of a £250 million bond issue. As the worldwide travel market entered a new phase of consolidation, Airtours appeared likely to take its place among the upper ranks of travel's global leaders.

Source: International Directory of Company Histories , Vol. 27. St. James Press, 1999.

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Airtours International

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Airtours International was launched on 01Oct1990 and began operations on 11Mar1991. Absorbed INTER EUROPEAN AIRWAYS in 1993. Danish tour airline, Simon Spies and it’s airline. Premair were acquired in 1996. UK’s second largest tour operator in 1998 [ – MYTRAVEL AIRWAYS was formed when the parent company consolidated AIRTOURS with PREMIER into a single fleet and renamed it in keeping with the corporate image. Integrated into THOMAS COOK AIRLINES] [ – Thomas Cook Airlines was formed through the merger of Caledonian Airways, Peach Air and Flying Colours as JMC Airlines on 01Sep1999, which took it”s name from the initials of John Mason Cook, son of the founder Thomas Cook. Operations started 27Mar2000. Renamed to current name on 30Mar2003. Mytravel Airways merged in in 2008. Thomas Cook Airlines (UK) ceased operations on 23Sep2019 ~ international passenger charter carrier specialising in holiday traffic]

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Simple Flying

What happened to british airtours.

Anyone flying out of or into London Gatwick or Manchester during the 1970s and 1980s may remember British Airtours. This was a charter airline operating Boeing 707, 737, 747, and Lockheed L-1011 Tristar aircraft. The brand existed until 1988 when it became Caledonian Airways. Part of it lived on into Thomas Cook Airlines until 2019.

Starting as BEA Airtours

British Airtours started life as BEA Airtours, a charter subsidiary of British European Airways (BEA), in 1969.

The airline offered a way for the government-owned BEA to expand in the growing charter and inclusive tour market. BEA offered scheduled flights, and BEA Airtours offered charter holiday flights. It started service out of Gatwick airport, using a fleet of de Havilland Comet aircraft. These were switched for Boeing 707s in 1971.

The airline was short-lived, as BEA merged with BOAC in 1974 to form British Airways. At this time, the airline was renamed British Airtours and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the new British Airways.

A subsidiary of British Airways

At the time it became British Airtours in 1974, it operated a fleet of nine Boeing 707 aircraft. Under British Airways, these were later replaced by new 737-200 aircraft (ordered alongside aircraft for the main airline).

It also introduced one new Boeing 747-200 aircraft in 1984. This replaced the last of the Boeing 707s on the airline's North American routes. These routes, known as Advance Booking Charters (ABC), had started in the mid-1970s as a way to meet demand on US routes not met by schedule airline options.

Fleet expansion and variation continued under British Airways, with a move away from Boeing to Lockheed. The larger Lockheed L-1011 Tristar was introduced in 1981 and operated alongside the Boeing 737, flying to the more popular destinations with higher capacity. It went on to operate 32 Tristars in total - its most operated type, with the Boeing 737 coming next at 29 (data obtained from AeroTransport Data Bank ATDB.aero ),

Becoming Caledonian Airways

British Airways merged with British Caledonian in 1988. At this time, British Airtours was renamed as Caledonian Airways. It continued to operate as a charter airline and continued the brand of Caledonian, with a modified Caledonian Airways livery with elements from the British Airways' Landor livery.

Fleetwise, it replaced the 737s over time (they moved to British Airways) with further L-1011 Tristar and Boeing 757 aircraft. It also introduced the DC-10 and the Airbus A320.

Caledonian Airways continued until 1995, when British Airways decided to move out of the charter market. It was then sold to the UK tour operator Inspirations.

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Eventually merging into Thomas Cook Airlines

Inspiration continued to operate charter flights from the UK, under the Caledonian brand, as well as Peach Air (which operator flights for the tour operator Goldcrest). It kept the Tristar fleet, but the 757s moved to British Airways,

Inspiration was part of the Carlson Leisure Group. This merged with Thomas Cook in 1999, with the Thomas Cook brand being retained. Thomas Cook's airline Flying Colours and Inspiration's airlines were merged to form JMC Air. This was rebranded as Thomas Cook Airlines in 2003.

Under Thomas Cook Airlines, the fleet, destinations, and UK operating bases were significantly expanded. But some of the legacies of British Airtours remained. This continued, of course, until 2019, when the Thomas Cook Group declared bankruptcy and the airline ceased operations.

British Airtours was a significant UK operator until the brand was lost in the 1980s. Do you have any experiences working or traveling with the airline? Let us know more in the comments. 

• Tour de Force: The British Airtours Story

As the ‘inclusive tour’ business blossomed in the late 1960s, British European Airways determined that the best way to increase its share of the holiday market was with a dedicated subsidiary. In the first of a two-part feature, David Ransted looks back at the early days of British Airtours.

British European Airways (BEA) approached the 1970s in a confident mood, with its growing fleet and route network supporting the ‘No.1 in Europe’ tagline of its advertising campaigns.

The corporation had nurtured its share of the vibrant ‘all-in package’ or ‘IT’ (inclusive tour) business to its many European and Mediterranean destinations, but there was a problem. Restrictions on the carriage of IT traffic by scheduled airlines, and the state-owned corporation’s much higher overhead costs compared with charter carriers, progressively eroded BEA’s share of the market throughout the decade.

The corporation realised its best option was to create an entirely separate, wholly owned subsidiary with its own employees and fleet to concentrate on the British IT sector. Using the economics of a standalone airline, it was able to fly whole-plane charters at lower costs with the operational support of the parent company. BEA Airtours was thus created in April 1969 with a remit to turn a profit within its first two years, or the experiment would be terminated, and the company wound up.

By process of elimination, BEA narrowed the search for an aircraft type to equip its little brother, and several options were considered and discarded:

• Vickers Vanguard: the tour operators wanted pure-jets.
• Hawker-Siddeley Trident 1 or Trident 3, or the BAC One-Eleven 500: insufficient range for the furthest destinations.
• Boeing 737-200 or 727-200: difficulty in gaining permission for a non-British type and the US dollars to pay for it.
• Lockheed L-1011 TriStar: too big for many routes and airports.

Two alternatives remained, the Trident 2 or the de Havilland DH106 Comet 4B. The advantage of the Comets was that BEA would soon have a surplus of the type as its Trident and One-Eleven fleets grew; they were ideally sized and offered a proven, readily available and low-cost route to facilitate a quick start-up. The £356,000 price tag for a second-hand Comet 4B – later renegotiated to £150,000 per aircraft – also compared very favourably with the £1,950,000 cost of a brand-new Trident 2E.

After major checks and structural modifications, an embryonic fleet of six Comets could be ready – unlike the Tridents – for the start of the 1970 summer season and initially the plan was to begin with the Comets and then to gradually start replacing them with the slightly larger 123-seat Trident 2s during 1972/73. The cut-price Comets were assumed to have a remaining service life of five years.

Flexible flying

BEA Airtours was formed on April 1, 1969 under the leadership of managing director W ‘Bill’ Baillie – formerly BEA’s head of flight operations – with a mission “to supply a series of flights for tour operators as well as ‘one-flight’ parties for club and conference organisers”. Based at London’s Gatwick airport, its watchword was flexibility, but with a firm nod towards cost reduction. Staff numbers were kept to a minimum, with contracts often requiring them to carry out a variety of tasks.

From the outset passenger handling at Gatwick was contracted to BEA. The quickly overworked employees, who had previously only dealt with flights to the Channel Islands, were quickly expanded. In 1972 BEA Airtours took over its own handling and in the coming years successfully bid for contracts with other airlines.

The company’s headquarters was hastily set up at Heston Training Centre in west London until the new offices were ready at Gatwick’s Airtours House – a hangar that the company purchased on the south side of the complex as its operations and engineering base.

With space for two Comets side by side and administration and crew reporting offices above, the structure was initially far bigger than needed and for a time part of its space was leased first to Caledonian Airways and later Donaldson International.

BEA Airtours targeted a 20% share of the UK IT market within three years and to keep costs down it employed only operational staff – pilots, cabin crew and engineers – with all other services contracted from BEA. From the start, the combined head office and hangar complex helped create a family atmosphere at the young company, a friendly unity that remained the airline’s hallmark throughout its history.

Independent of the parent company, BEA Airtours established a charter office and set to work liaising with tour operators to generate charter traffic with three types of contract offered: series (for instance, a weekly rotation), ad-hoc (a one-off flight) and time (buying a number of aircraft hours).

By the time BEA Airtours was ready to tout for business for the 1970 summer season many of the available contracts had already been snapped up by competitors, but it benefited from the late 1968 demise of British Eagle, and was able to pick up some of the scraps. During the planning phase, in Jul 1969, it was decided that the initial plan for six Comets with a seventh in reserve would not be adequate, so the revised proposal called for a fleet of eight in year one and nine by year two. The company hungrily pursued business and by the time of its first flight in March 1970 it had already secured more than 17,000 hours of work through to March 1971.

Fleeting requirements

BEA Airtours’ flight and ground crew worked to BEA’s exacting standards, with pilots transferring directly from the parent company. While most of the captains had Comet experience, many of the first officers were new to the type and were trained by BEA at Heston.

The surplus de Havilland Comet 4B aircraft, purchased from BEA, were configured with 109 seats, and before they started flying for BEA Airtours their interiors were given a makeover. Determined to make a good first impression, the new look was designed by the Charles Butler agency, whose other cabin interior design work included Concorde. The aircraft were given the same standard tourist class configuration as BEA’s BAC One-Eleven 500s, with seats in blocks of colour - royal blue, orange and yellow - with blue carpet, pale blue bulkheads and yellow curtains all designed to enhance the holiday mood. The cabin crew, however, retained their BEA uniforms.

The airline relied on an outside supplier for its catering, and fixtures and fittings in the galleys were changed to reflect Airtours’ different requirements to the more business-orientated mainline BEA, enabling it to carry meals and snacks for both outbound and inbound flights together. On the exterior, the Comets flew in a slightly modified version of BEA’s Speedjack livery with ‘airtours’ added just above the cheatline.

BEA Airtours’ inaugural flight took place on March 6, 1970 – a grey wintry day. Comet 4B, registered G-ARJL (c/n 06455) operated flight KT243 (‘Beatours 243’), commanded by Captain Peter McKeown with first officers Peter Jarvis and Geoffrey Evans, departed Gatwick just after 1400hrs for Palma. Capt McKeown had previously been BEA’s senior training captain of the Comet fleet before moving in to the same role for the BAC One-Eleven portfolio.

In the cabin were chief stewards Eric Winsper and Ray Short and stewardesses Maggie Read and Pauline Pool. In time, Capt Peter ‘PJ’ McKeown became a legendary figure at Airtours. In his book No Time On The Ground, former Airtours senior first officer, Ken Fitzroy, described Capt McKeown as “much liked, straight talking, and very much respected. He did us proud for a great many years.”

To mark the historic occasion, the flight – which carried only 25 paying customers, with the remaining seats filled by staff from BEA Airtours, BEA and Sunair Holidays – was seen off by senior management and members of the press amid a carnival atmosphere. Those Airtours staff who had remained at the hangar base gathered outside to cheer the aircraft on its way as it took off.

After the celebrations it was back to work: from day one the Airtours team worked hard to make the airline a success; by the end of that first month it had operated 100 charters to 23 different destinations for six tour operators without a hitch. April brought the carrier’s total to eight Comets, and during that second month it more than doubled the number of sorties to 231.

By the end of August, the new airline had completed 10,000 flying hours, carrying around 350,000 passengers to almost 50 destinations, and it transported an impressive 530,087 travellers before the end of the year.

After its first full year of operation, the figures had grown to 84 destinations and 650,000 passengers.

The Comets operated with a cabin crew of three – a senior steward and two stewardesses – who served client-specified catering ranging from coffee and biscuits to cold lunches up to first-class dinners.

A range of duty-free goods was also offered, which could be pre-ordered from brochures and delivered to passengers during the flight. In an era before electronic in-flight entertainment, the airline kept children entertained with board games and jigsaw puzzles.

A networked solution

The Comet 4B’s 2,200-mile (3,540km) range brought all the European and Mediterranean holiday resorts within nonstop reach of Gatwick. The airline had settled on the West Sussex facility after evaluating nine possible bases, including Heathrow. The final runoff was against Luton – which was thought to have a better catchment area – but as Gatwick was already home to BEA personnel and slightly closer to European destinations, it triumphed.

The airline found it difficult to establish profitable business from other UK airports, with their lower yields and the added cost of positioning flights. As such, in its early days the carrier concentrated its flying from Gatwick. The notable exception was a limited programme of charters from Manchester, with the Comets repositioning rather than being based in the northwest.

One of the unexpected advantages that the Comets afforded BEA Airtours over the more modern BAC One-Elevens of its rivals soon became clear.

When French air traffic controllers were on strike or ‘working to rule’, the longer-legged Comets could fly out to sea and around French airspace to link their customers with their Mediterranean destinations, albeit with some delays and extra fuel burn from the extended routing.

Ad-hoc efforts

Although some rival charter airlines complained that the new airline was subsidised by its state-owned parent, BEA Airtours was fully autonomous and self-financing, although it did benefit from BEA’s expertise.

In addition to its core IT business, Airtours eagerly sought ad-hoc charters as a means of keeping its fleet busy. Within a month of commencing operations, the new company’s mettle was tested when it won a three-week contract to transport large groups of passengers simultaneously. The guests, all top-producing dealers for a US manufacturing firm, had been rewarded with an all-inclusive week in Europe, being brought to London by US airline World Airways.

BEA Airtours won a tender from the American carrier to provide day trips from London to Paris, Amsterdam and Geneva. Given the scale and profile of the commission, considerable planning was necessary. On the Paris trips BEA Airtours had to dispatch four Comets – with 360 passengers in total – within a few minutes of each other. The contract was swiftly followed by the first of many sports-related charters, bringing French rugby fans to a Wales versus France rugby international in the Welsh capital.

The fledgling airline developed a thriving business supporting conference and incentive trips, study tours, trade fairs and exhibitions, quickly gaining a reputation for reliability and good service. In its first few years of operation it acquired contracts with many of Europe’s tour operators and cruise lines, as well as with flag carriers and fellow charter airlines. Its customer base extended to include football clubs, orchestras, the National Health Service, schools and universities, the Scouts Association, the National Union of Students, religious and educational travel organisers, broadcasters, the Ministry of Defence, a wide number of industrial companies and even NATO.

Contracts varied from one-off charters to a full season of regular flying. In its first year, the airline stepped in to cover scheduled flights for BEA and BKS Air Transport and, in addition to flying, BEA Airtours was chosen in March 1970 to service Channel Airways’ Comet fleet. All in all, it was a flying start.

New aircraft

Almost as soon as it began operations, BEA Airtours began casting around for a bigger replacement for the Comets, identifying the Boeing 720 as the ideal size. In November 1970 it entered negotiations to buy seven used Boeing 707-120Bs from American Airlines, but at around this time BOAC announced a surplus of aircraft, offering seven of the more powerful, longer-range Rolls-Royce Conway-powered 707-436s, which had about a quarter of their structural life remaining.

The heavier BOAC jets were less suitable than the 720s for Airtours, with their inhibited airfield performance at some of the carrier’s smaller airports and their higher operating costs, but BOAC reduced the asking price to sweeten the deal (brand-new Tridents and BAC One-Eleven 500s had proven to be too small and too expensive).

The IT business was booming and Airtours was already firmly profitable, with the large increase in capacity coming at a time when other UK charter airlines were also upscaling. The airline took the seven BOAC 707s – rising to nine by the summer 1974 season – in a 189-seat layout, for £4.3m including spare engines and parts.

By mid-1974, when tenant Donaldson International ceased trading, Airtours was ready to fully occupy its entire hangar space at Gatwick.

Bigger and better

In 1972 BEA Airtours carried 875,747 passengers – 10% of the UK charter market and an increase of almost 200,000 on the previous year – and declared a profit of £270,000. By the end of the year, its 707 fleet had grown to eight, while four of the nine Comets had been sold to Dan-Air.

The final BEA Airtours Comet flight took place on Oct 31, 1973 when G-ARJL (c/n 06455) – the aircraft that had operated the company’s first flight – returned from Paris/Le Bourget to Gatwick. Since the airline’s launch in 1970 the Comets had given it a firm foothold in the UK market, faithfully carrying around two million customers. The date also marked the last day of BEA Airtours: when the clock struck midnight the company became British Airtours, ahead of its transition to the subsidiary of newly-consolidated flag carrier British Airways in April 1974.

By the end of 1973, BEA Airtours had carried 852,824 passengers, down on the previous year as the oil crisis started to bite, but still making it the UK’s seventh largest airline, ahead of rivals Laker and Monarch. Despite recession and industrial unrest in the UK, the airline looked forward to 1974 with increased capacity and a new identity.

The 707s were operated with a flight crew of three and five cabin crew, led by a purser, with crew training initially carried out by BOAC at Heathrow. The first 707-436, G-APFK (c/n 17712), was delivered on December 30, 1971 with the remainder arriving before the start of the 1973 summer season. With the aircraft’s longer range, the airline moved quickly to spread its wings, applying for route licences to points across East Africa, in addition to Colombo, Delhi, Bangkok, Hong Kong and as far afield as Fiji.

The inaugural 707 flight, however, was to a more typical IT destination when G-APFK departed for Venice on January 7, 1972 with Captain Peter McKeown at the helm. The passengers included BEA board members, staff, the travel press and leading representatives of government and tour operators. The first commercial flights came two days later when Airtours’ first two 707s, ’FK and ’FH, undertook charters to Alicante and Barcelona.

On March 16, 1972 a BEA Airtours 707, once again under the command of the company’s Flight Manager, Captain Peter McKeown, made the first commercial long-haul flight in BEA’s history with a service to Delhi – with a refuelling stop in Tehran – carrying more than 180 travel agents, press and trade representatives on behalf of the Wings tour operator.

The return flight to Gatwick, after a diversion to Abadan for fuel (due to snow in Tehran), marked the longest flight ever flown by a BEA aircraft up to that time. Despite the more complex nature of long-haul flying, the airline was soon operating to Sri Lanka, India and West Africa. Closer to home, the IT sector was bigger than ever; the 707s shouldered around a quarter of the workload, the Comets taking most of the rest, and the company even leased in a Cambrian Airways BAC One-Eleven to help in the summer peak.

For long-haul work, the 707s were fitted with inertial navigation systems. Ironically, the first far-flung contract was with BOAC, which had sold Airtours the 707s and was now temporarily short of capacity, with the aircraft operating to Hong Kong via Dubai and Bangkok. The senior carrier would continue to employ Airtours’ 707s until 1977.

In 1973 BEA Airtours was granted ABC (Advanced Booking Charter) licences to the USA and Canada, the first flight operating to New York on January 27, 1974 although Airtours had operated its first transatlantic flight on Sept 4, 1973 standing in for BOAC on a Jamaica schedule. In early 1974 the company began a series of all first class month-long round-the-world charters, and by 1975 six of the fleet were deployed full-time on European IT work while others operated to the USA, Canada or the Far East.

Wet leasing

Despite a growing IT market, the 707’s 189-seat capacity was too large for some European destinations and IT operators. Particularly in winter, the company was losing out to rivals Dan-Air, Laker, Britannia, Monarch and British Caledonian which had fleets better suited to the individual mission. The type also became costly to operate in the wake of the increased fuel prices resulting from the 1973 oil crisis, leading the airline to a financial loss (the company even reduced the cruising speed of its 707s to Mach 0.79 to save money).

The bankruptcy of Horizon Holidays left Airtours with two 707s and their crews with little to do. In an effort to absorb some of the extra capacity, the carrier sought contracts to supply aircraft and crews to other airlines, adapting British Midland’s ‘instant airline’ model. It agreed a deal to operate scheduled services for Syrian Arab Airlines from Damascus to European and Middle East destinations and two of the 707s were painted in Syrian Arab livery.

The aircraft kept their British registrations and were flown by Airtours flight crew, the flight engineer providing engineering coverage at stops; the cabin staff were supplied by Syrian Arab, apart from the Airtours chief steward. At this time of heightened tensions between Syria and Israel, the contract was not without risk. Landing at night at Damascus airport, 14 miles (22.5km) outside the city, close to the border, and surrounded by unlit desert, felt rather like landing on an aircraft carrier (the runway lights were illuminated only when the aircraft was ten miles out and switched off immediately after it had landed).

A contract was also secured to operate for Mozambique national carrier DETA between Lourenco Marques (now Maputo) and Lisbon. A further deal with Air Mauritius was signed to operate services on its behalf from its Plaisance base to London and Bombay (Mumbai), while a lucrative revenue stream was established providing extra capacity for Iran Air during peak demand periods.

Further Hajj pilgrimage and other charter series were agreed, including with Iran Air, South African Airways and Royal Brunei. On Hajj flights out of Sana’a, Yemen, at 7,216ft (2,199m) above sea level, the 707’s take-off weight was severely restricted.

Elsewhere the company picked up a contract with Kenya Airways as well as continuing to cover some British Airways schedules from Heathrow. In addition to its charter and wet leasing activities, British Airtours signed new handling agreements for other airlines at Gatwick, growing its income and spreading its risk, but stretching its hard-pressed band of ground staff.

All in all, it is fair to say that by the end of the 1970s, BEA/British Airtours had gained a firm footing and an enviable reputation in the UK leisure travel market...

• British Airtours
• Airliner World

Originally published in Airliner World Magazine

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Air Announce Moon Safari North American Tour Dates

By Nina Corcoran

Air have been playing their 1998 classic Moon Safari on tour in Europe, and the French duo has now announced the North American leg of the anniversary tour. The shows in Canada and the United States take place in the fall. See all of Air’s upcoming tour dates below.

It’s been over a decade since Air last released an album of new material. After putting out Le voyage dans la lune in 2012—a soundtrack for the restored version of Georges Méliès’ iconic silent film—the duo did share the compilation LP Twentyyears four years later, and it included the two previously unreleased songs “Roger Song” and “Adis Abebah.”

See which album Air’s Nicolas Godin picked for a list of “ 33 Musicians on Their Favorite Albums of the Last 25 Years .”

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03-07 Paris, France - L’Olympia 03-08 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso 03-24 London, England - London Coliseum 05-30 London, England - Royal Albert Hall 05-31 London, England - Royal Albert Hall 06-02 Zurich, Switzerland - Unique Moments Festival 06-14 Barcelona, Spain - Sónar Barcelona 06-21 Rome, Italy - Cavea 06-22 Ferrara, Italy - Summer Vibez 06-24 Paris, France - Days Off Festival at the Philharmonie 06-26 Halifax, England - The Piece Hall 06-27 Southampton, England - The Guildhall Square 06-30 Dublin, Ireland - Trinity College 07-05 Gdynia, Poland - Open’er Festival 07-09 Cascais, Portugal - Cool Jazz Festival 07-16 Luxembourg, Luxembourg - Neïmenster 07-18 Gent, Belgium - Gent Jazz Festival 07-19 Gent, Belgium - Gent Jazz Festival 07-21 Berlin, Germany - Spandau Citadel 07-23 Vienna, Austria - Metastadt Open Air 09-25 Vancouver, British Columbia - Queen Elizabeth Theatre 09-27 Seattle, WA - Benaroya Hall 09-29 Los Angeles, CA - The Orpheum Theatre 09-30 Los Angeles, CA - The Orpheum Theatre 10-02 San Francisco, CA - The Masonic 10-04 Denver, CO - Bellco Theatre 10-06 Minneapolis, MN - State Theatre 10-08 Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre 10-10 Detroit, MI - Fox Theatre 10-12 Toronto, Ontario - Massey Hall 10-13 Montreal, Quebec - Place Bell 10-15 Boston, MA - MGM Music Hall at Fenway 10-17 Philadelphia, PA - The Met 10-18 Washington, D.C. - The Anthem 10-21 New York, NY - Beacon Theatre 10-24 Atlanta, GA - Tabernacle 10-26 Miami Beach, FL - The Fillmore Miami Beach 10-29 Dallas, TX - Music Hall at Fair Park 10-30 Austin, TX - Moody Amphitheatre

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Since Papillon’s founding by Elling Halvorson in 1965, our commitment to our passengers has been unparalleled customer service and adventure beyond imagination – it's what has kept our company on top through the decades until this day. Papillon (the French word for “butterfly”) is the only company that flies the entire Grand Canyon, including areas untouched by man and inaccessible on foot.

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Category : Airports in Moscow Oblast

Federal subjects of the Russian Federation:

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• Chernoi (air base) ‎ (2 F)
• Domodedovo International Airport ‎ (7 C, 146 F)
• Sheremetyevo International Airport ‎ (8 C, 88 F)
• Zhukovsky International Airport ‎ (2 C, 16 F)

• Airfields in Moscow Oblast
• Air transport infrastructure in Moscow Oblast
• Airports in Russia by region
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