Flying the Pacific with BCPA
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Flying the Pacific with BCPA
Crossing the Pacific Ocean in style from Auckland (or Sydney) to San Francisco and Vancouver with British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines between 1949 and 1954 in their Douglas DC-6 sleeper transport airliners was definitely a considerably more classy way to travel than today's cattle class....
(click on each photograph in turn to view the source at the National Library of NZ website)
(click on each photograph in turn to view the source at the National Library of NZ website)
A very short lived airline. Began operations September 1946 with the DC-4, which were replaced with four DC-6 in February 1949, and had the Comet 2 on order. On 29 October 1953 DC-6 VH-BPE crashed during an instrument approach into San Fransisco with the loss of all eleven passengers and eight crew. The airline flew its final trip 11 May 1954, with all staff then integrated into QANTAS.
There is a lot of information on BCPA on the Queensland Air Museum website
Some of it appears above without attribution.
Some of it appears above without attribution.
Last edited by Fris B. Fairing; 25th Feb 2023 at 21:05. Reason: correcting URL
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Absolutely Fantastic, I always love to read about BCPA,Propliner magazine had a feature on them about 20 years ago and i still love to read it,definitely a classic.
I suspect that earlier, shorter sleeper DC-6s were operated in a single-class, all sleeper configuration, like the BCPA examples. There is a photo on the Wikipedia DC-6 page of a SAS aircraft with the same window layout, and that's also an early, short-fuselage DC-6.
American, Pan Am, etc operated mostly the longer DC-6B and I'm guessing that they would have been in a two-class configuration with sleeperette seats only at the front of the cabin, hence fewer upper windows.
American, Pan Am, etc operated mostly the longer DC-6B and I'm guessing that they would have been in a two-class configuration with sleeperette seats only at the front of the cabin, hence fewer upper windows.
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It seems that the BCPA sleeper DC-6s had the standard upper window fit common to SAS and American Airlines.
I don't think I've ever seen a DC-6B photo with any sleeper windows... Pan Am only had DC-6As and DC-6Bs AFAIK....
I don't think I've ever seen a DC-6B photo with any sleeper windows... Pan Am only had DC-6As and DC-6Bs AFAIK....
I don't think I've ever seen a DC-6B photo with any sleeper windows...
Pan Am's DC-6Bs had two upper windows on the starboard size, spaced at roughly double the regular window pitch, and two closer together on the port side, but that may not have had anything to do with sleeping accommodation.
But if not, does anyone know what they were for?
thanks
this is a rather delicious archive feature
Double-page Douglas ad for the DC-6 in Life magazine, April 1947, mentioning the sleeper seats and upper-berth windows:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...PA93#v=twopage
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...PA93#v=twopage
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The DC-6 was offered as either a day-plane, or a sleeper transport, or a combination with sleeping berths in the rear cabin. Some operators designated the rear cabin as first class and only had sleeping berths in there. If you look at historic photographs of DC-6 airliners, you can see that some of them only had the small upper-berth windows above the rear cabin windows.
The DC-6B had the same options, but I have only ever seen photos of DC-6Bs with the small upper-berth windows above the rear cabin windows.
The book “Douglas DC-6 and DC-7” by Harry Gann (Airliner Tech Series, Volume 4) has a lot of photographs showing the various combinations of windows, including a photo of a Pan American Grace Douglas DC-7B with upper-berth windows above the rear cabin main windows.
The DC-6B had the same options, but I have only ever seen photos of DC-6Bs with the small upper-berth windows above the rear cabin windows.
The book “Douglas DC-6 and DC-7” by Harry Gann (Airliner Tech Series, Volume 4) has a lot of photographs showing the various combinations of windows, including a photo of a Pan American Grace Douglas DC-7B with upper-berth windows above the rear cabin main windows.
