BEA Airtours in 1970 was formed up to fly from LGW & MAN for BEA owned package tour company's - Flair, Enterprise, Hickie Borman, Sovereign and Martin Rooks holidays.
Much to the anger protest & distain of the Gatwick based Laker AW (Lord Bros Hols) Caledonian AW and BUA (Global, Wings, and Horizon Hols) plus Dan Air who had no in-
house Tour Co.
and to a lesser extent to the annoyance of Britannia AW (Thomsons) Court Line (Clarksons) and Monarch (Cosmos) - but these 3 airlines then, were mainly LTN based operators, along with Dan Air at LTN who had a 1-11 300/400 base of 5 a/c flying for Lunn Poly, Horizon/4S and Everyman holidays.
Channel Airways who had a large Lyons Tours IT contract from STN and LTN were to go bust by the next summer.
KT would also fly for many other tour operators as well, such as Pontinental, Whitehall, Castle, Panorama, Wings, Mato Jetway, and Ellerman Sunflight.
They were always AFAICR known as KT, not BKT (The 3 letter Iaco codes were not really used in those days)
aka the St Trinian's airline amongst the staff.
Flight code was KT although at LGW flights were all called ''Tango'' - this was also heard on departure calls, seen on boarding cards and bag tags.
Not sure where Tango came from....
Comets were flown at first up to the end of the summer 1973, with the 707-436's from BOAC coming on stream in 1972,
KT did want to obtain 707-123B's from AA but HM Govt thwarted that.
(Laker, Caledonian, Britannia, and Monarch were all by then flying JT3D fan powered Boeing 707 and 720B)
in 1974 now called British Airtours (still KT)
707-336C VPB was added plus a 707-336B XXY some years later.
Tristars added from 1981/1982 and new 737-200ADVs from 1980.
KT used the L1011-1/-50 plus also the 200 and 500 series. The Tristars went all around the Med with the 200 and 500 series also doing ABC flights.
In early 1984 a brand new RR 747-236 came straight to KT from Boeing G-BDXL in Negus for just for one season - used for Ski flights, Med and Canaries and ABC's to Canada & USA.
The next 747 to join leased on and off to KT was G-BGMS (in Landor) a 1971 -283B from SAS which went on in 1988 to serve with both BA and CKT Caledonian until it's sale in 1990 to Virgin Atlantic.
BA's G-BLVE and VF, also operated for British Airtours for a while in summer 1985 In full BA landor.
The BEA/ BA Airtours fleet flew all the usual Med and Canaries IT routes, with the 707's doing the Affinity/ABC charters to USA and Canada from early on (sold through Poundstretcher and Jetsave flights)
I flew VPB LGW-EWR on staff travel in 1981 - KT took my World AW free ticket LGW-BWI-EWR as an LMC runner to the gate with my bag, as the WO DC-10 was still very Tech in FRA.
Nice flight and I got to NYC on time for my evening out...
Again on STBY staff travel I flew Corfu-LGW on 707 XXY in June 1982.
Both still had the hat racks.
I flew to Corfu and Palma on a Syrian painted 707.
KT leased in Dan Air's 707 YSL for a couple of seasons, and KT leased out to Syrian a pair of 707's, and a trio to Air Mauritius to help them start up their own long haul.
When I was at Monarch in 1985 KT flew a few rotations a week for us with one of their 732, LGW-JMK, JSI and JTR.
Aircraft used often just had ''British'' painted on it so although in 130Y config it was a mainline a/c.
All were made with tech stops on the way back at ATH or SKG.
Lots of W flights were done with crew transport used around the UK to join the dots.
LBA and LTN were 2 such places where Tristars flew such patterns to/from Palma.
The Tri-Star's were starting to become horridly unreliable - often 2 were AOG at LGW with another one AOG at MAN, all 3 due to go to ATH and back on a Friday night -- and then all to Palma early on SAT morning, then ALC in the afternoon and IBZ on the SAT night, (trying to forget Sunday lol, with was TFS and LPA)
all of which then sent shock waves through the flying program over the weekend until early the following week to play catch up.
3 x 393 seats x 12 R/T flights by SUN morning was daunting to shift = 24 pax sectors.
The KT name goes =
In 1988 BA bought BCAL and KT was renamed Caledonian AW (now CKT) with a smart new livery, a Landor version of the BCAL scheme.
BCAL had its own charter arm from 1982, BCAL Charter that had 2 ex Laker DC10-10's, but was renamed as stand alone Cal Air in 1985, which was then sold off as Novair in 1988 after the BA/BCAL buyout.
The CKT Tri-Star and 737 fleet during 1989 then was to include new 757's.
DC-10-30 from BA mainline was added later for long haul to Mombasa, the Caribbean and the Maldives non stop.
The Tristar (and 757 iirc) also did some long haul but had to tech stop BGR for MCO and BAH for Maldives.
747 G-BMGS was leased again to CKT until 1990 when sold to Virgin.
In 1995 all ties with BA were gone when CKT was sold to Inspirations Holidays who only were taking on the former KT Tristar fleet.
In turn by 1999 that group was sold to Thomas Cook who merged CKT with FCL and AWD to become JMC Air.