On the Holiday Jets wide body discussion WHBM and I had a little discussion about the BOAC/BA tag on trip they used to do with one of the lHR-JFK 747s doing a quick two hour out and back from JFK to Bermuda BDA which was often pretty popular , Bermuda being then and still is a colony BA were presumably the 'national carrier'.
Reflecting on this -I spend 11 years of my life on the island , I remembered that BOAC/ BA also did something similar with VC10s from JFK running down to the Caribbean Islands, Inf act my second ever trip was JFK to Barbados with a stop in Antigua and , as they say, continuing service to Port of Spain. (my first trip was LHR-JFK on the same day)_. Very popular with US tourists as VC10 was lovely to fly on , smooth, nice seats and legroom and nice longhaul BOAC service hence its sort of qualification for this thread .
However while the out and back to Bermuda took only five hours and therefore a BA747 from London arriving JFK early afternoon could easily return to JFK to operate one of the later JFK-LHR overnights the trip down the islands was far far longer. JFK-POS is at least five hours and adding in the time lost with two intermediate stops and minimum one hour on the ground at ANU and BGI that's 16-17 hour round trip . So does any one know how they managed this trip, I flew it bothways , once as described and another time a year later when it was a BGi-JFK direct .
The crew must have slipped somewhere nice -probably BGI so I expect it was a popular bid , Rather like the wonderful Jo burg Mauritius Seychelles Colombo Hong Kong Tokyo VC10 trip which had to be the worlds most exotic flight from a crew perspective. Like many trips back then it didnt operate every day which used to make those old BOAC schedules so interesting like LHR-Tokyo-different day different route