Originally Posted by
pax britanica
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
There's a poster here who used to work in BOAC schedules department and did this working-out.
The BOAC VC-10 from JFK on to the Eastern Caribbean was often the through aircraft from Manchester and Prestwick. The crew slipped at JFK, and departing at 16.30 (in 1971) through Antigua, Barbados, Trinidad and Georgetown in Guyana was some 8 hours overall, arriving after midnight. Although not every day of the week, on the days it did operate there was another flight from London, either direct London to Barbados or stopping at Bermuda, which presumably slipped along the way, arriving at Georgetown early evening, several hours before the JFK flight. Next morning the JFK flight left at 08.00, and the direct London at 12 noon. I presume the two overnighting crews at Georgetown exchanged between the duties.