Originally Posted by
Peter47
I don't know if Aer Lingus was part of ATLAS or KSSU, they certainly did a lot of third party maintenance work but it may have been that the the small fleet size was not such a problem..
I believe that outside support for their 747s beyond the considerable Dublin abilities came from BA at Heathrow.
Accounts of "off season" leasing out are around, but a number of the leases actually crossed the Aer Lingus peak season as well.Of the original pair, one was leased out full time from 1973 to 1981, initially to a Thai operator and then one with BA for years as G-BDPZ from 1976 onwards. When the Thai aircraft was due a major check the other one was sent over for a month in Spring 1975 - they really did have a surplus of capacity. They did indeed also do Hadj runs, chartered to more local carriers such as Air Algerie.
The widebody Heathrow runs have long, occasionally, been arranged at short notice, the hourly flights from Dublin might be disorganised by fog, they can't do the BA approach at Glasgow/Edinburgh of saying "well, there's a train", so by midday a 747 (and in more recent times of course an A330) would be a packed-out substitute for rwo or three delayed flights.