BAF acquisition of British Airways Viscount 800s.

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The OP asked "why did BAF buy the Viscounts?"

Good question; maybe Mike Keegan had his eyes on them before the purchase suddenly became a matter on necessity, maybe not.

At the time (late '79, early '80) BAF had an ACMI-type contract to operate 4 Heralds in Algeria, They were providing all internal commercial services for Air Algerie, the Air Force having decided to stop doing that.

The contract stipulated that BAF would operate a schedule provided by AA, and supply all the required crews, maintenance staff, other support staff, parts, etc etc. AA paid for all fuel uplifts and landing fees, and provided space in the open at Algiers, later at Ghardaia, for maintenance. They also supplied cabin staff, whom BAF had to train to their operations manual requirements.

The contract was rather onerous, perhaps because it was in French. AA paid per sector flown. If a flight was cancelled by them they paid a cancellation charge. But if BAF had to cancel for any reason whatsoever, they paid nothing. So if there was not a good load, the cabin staff would fail to appear and BAF had to cancel the flight. Simple, eh? There were lots of other contractual problems as well.

But the Herald's performance at hot 'n high airfields was the main problem. On flights from Tamanrasset in the deep South, which was (AFAIR) 6,000 ft ASL, the uplift was occasionally restricted to 3 or 4 passengers and baggage.

So the Algerians eventually said they would terminate unless BAF found a better aircraft. A meeting took place at HQ in Southend of Mike K, Jeremy K , the person in charge in Algerie (flown back for the purpose) and the Ops Manager. There was no discussion; Mike said he understood the problem, had a solution, and the meeting would reconvene in the evening. And off he went, and about 10 minutes later his private twin (Cessna 310? I forget) took off, with only him on board.

When the meeting reconvened he was already back. He announced that he had been to Heathrow, called in a favour from an old friend he had helped in the past, and had bought the entire BA Viscount fleet, then parked at Cardiff, lock, stock and barrel. The price was astonishingly low, and was for the airframes and engines as they stood. There was a separate agreement that BA would retain and store all the spares, including several engines. in their inventory at that time, so that BAF could collect what was needed but only when needed, and pay the original cost price at the time of collection. It's a pity that Mike K isn't around to negotiate Brexit. The flyable airframes would be brought by BA up to ferry capability one by one, and collected by BAF one by one to, be flown to SEN. "What about the wingspars" was the immediate question, but he already had that worked out; from the whole fleet he would cannibalise at least 5 aircraft with reasonable spar lives remaining.

The first two aircraft went to Libya; the financial lure was irrestistable, in that the monthly rent just about matched the aircraft's purchase cost, and the refurb costs were about the same. I don't know what happened re Algeria, I had quit by then.

Later ones went on the market asap for tour operator charters. Palma, in particular, flight planning to Nice and then diverting to Palma, so as not to lose any seats. (Those from the old school of aviation will understand that. The FOI was strangely blind.)

There's an awful lot more to it than that,of course, but that's the bones of the reply to the question "Why did BAF buy Viscounts?".

As a postscript; when the first aircraft was collected, Mike was there, operating as co-pilot. The story goes (ie this is hearsay) that the Chief Engineer was checking the documentation very carefully, and suddenly said "Hang on, the radio serials are not the ones in the inventory". "Shut yer f*****g mouth" said Mike, who had spotted that the radios looked new, modern, even. (He tended to talk that way.) On the flight back he guessed that the programme of changeover to modern radios was in progress, the Viscounts were in the programme, and no-one had told maintenance not to bother. If this really happened, the value of the new radios would have been close to the price of the complete airframe..