Originally Posted by
rog747
LTU certainly had the Oomph in using big jets for the German sun seekers - Their Tristars lined up at RHO, LPA, or PMI was the norm
German operators, even more than UK ones, had their fleets split across the country from where they all ran to the same destination on the same changeover day, so the LTU widebodies would be one each from Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart etc, with of course a Dan-Air 727 thrown in from Berlin. Condor did the same. As the season ran down they might merge two points onto one aircraft. I believe Laker had actually got an A300 contract for Berlin as well with their aircraft which were delivered just a few months before they went under, so it never started.
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LTU had a deal from the start with Eastern AL to take some of their L1011 fleet on sale/lease back. This arrangement continued until EAL's demise in 1991.... For the Canary Islands, High Season there was the winter months for Germans and Scandinavians..
There are many places around whose holiday peak is in the UK winter, and Eastern, focused heavily on Florida, was one whose peak passenger demand was actually December to April, hence the longstanding cross-charter arrangements of varying types. Canada has always been even more like this, hence Wardair (and others) spending the summer on transatlantic affinity charters and the winter on Florida/Caribbean/Hawaii etc.
Finland especially peaks to The Canaries in the winter. Helsinki to Las Palmas is the longest journey that can be made within Europe, about 7 hours, and operators long have needed to have long-haul aircraft for this and other Scandinavian points, going right back to the 1960s with old DC-7s. Doesn't really belong on a widebody thread but this is what was behind Spantax building up their classic Convair 990 fleet, which spent the winter at Las Palmas/Tenerife, at a time when they had the range but were at near scrap value. Their long-haul range had been well below expectations, but they were fine on this one.