Originally Posted by
WHBM
Regarding the Gatwick incident. Although Frank Lorenzo's Continental was regarded as a mainstream US carrier at the time, it had a certain reputation. They had just absorbed People Express, which was a post-deregulation startup, and the 747 N605PE was still in PE livery. The aircraft came from a rather mixed background. It was an early -200B model, new to Alitalia in 1972 (the AAIB report incorrectly states 1978), traded back to Boeing in 1980. It then hung around for nearly 4 years, mainly in the desert with various leases out for the Jeddah Hadj, until it was picked up by People Express in 1984 when they were in expansion mode and used on transatlantic low-cost flights. They ran notably short of cash and eventually were sold to Mr Lorenzo and merged in a year before the incident. Continental had not been 747 operator until then so the previous methods and recently recruited staffing carried on. You might say the aircraft had not been operated by a well-resourced carrier for some 8 years prior to the event.
The early -200Bs were not a significant advance on the original -100, that came later when the RR and GE engined versions came along, which P&W then caught up with, all still designated -200B so a bit confusing. Alitalia, along with several other operators, traded in the whole of their original 747 fleet, including this one, for the new and much more capable models in 1980-81.
Not all true
Continental had operated 747’s in the past, four new -124 variants were delivered to the airline and operated between 1971 and 1974, then the price of fuel saw them replaced by the DC10
That was the queen of the skies ‘first life’ at Cal, then several used models rejoined the fleet with the PE merger in the ‘80’s