Originally Posted by
rog747
The Shuttle was a success for BA during a period of internal strife but November 1, 1982 would throw a major spanner in the works. That was the day that British Midland, the only other British airline of size with a presence at Heathrow, began its own ‘Diamond Service’ flights between Heathrow and Glasgow. These used DC-9s six times daily, neatly dovetailed in between the BA shuttle services. They offered lower fares as well as full in-flight service (Hot breakfast and Cornflakes and milk for breakfast).
Midland’s operations would soon extend to Edinburgh and Belfast and the impact on BA’s shuttle was profound.
BA responded with an advertising campaign that showed a single passenger being flown in comfort on a back-up aircraft and BA used Concorde to show off on the Shuttle.
To pass the advertising standards this needed to have actually happened and apparently it had once, although there were many times when a handful of passengers were all that were onboard anyway.
I was a periodic passenger during much of this time, as some of us have discussed previously.
BA did used to stick Concorde onto the Glasgow shuttle a few times, whenever
PR thought it worthwhile. The day the BMA Diamond Service to Glasgow started there was a press conference about it at Glasgow airport, which was ruined for BMA when someone shouted that Concorde had just landed and everyone in the room rushed out ... the Concorde sectors were apparently some training/currency details which would have gone to Shannon, their normal point for this, just rearranged into the Shuttle. No advance publicity, but my Glasgow colleague chanced upon one, which dominated our meeting that day in London.
BA had a range of approaches to minimise any wastage of a Shuttle backup. Onetime contact, on the dedicated ops team they had, said the minimum had been 7 in his experience. Certainly, with hourly operation to Glasgow, passengers treated it as pretty much turn up and go, so from backup "Go" to closing the door a good few more turned up. There was a lot of prediction of loads to give an optimum operation and various techniques to minimise wastage, and serious delays due to an aircraft going tech became minimal. It was necessary from time to time to also run an empty aircraft in the opposite direction to maintain the balance at either end.
One day, due to (in part) said contact having been on holiday, a message misunderstanding/blunder in Shuttle Control led to two empty aircraft being dispatched from both Edinburgh and London at the same time, each station having been sent a message that a backup aircraft should be sent to the opposite end. By the time it was realised, the two had passed in mid-flight. I recall this one made it into Roger Bacon in Flight magazine.