Originally Posted by
LTNman
Skyways International also flew a scheduled service between Luton and Ostend in 1971
The name change from Skyways Coach-Air was shortly before they ended operations. These schedules, a few times a week, were a "W" Lympne-Ostend-Luton and back. Skyways only attempted intermittent scheduled service to Ostend, but did a good number of IT charter flights there from Lympne for Continental coach holiday operators, as Ostend was a significant centre for touring coach operators running all over Europe.
Skyways Coach-Air had been half-owned by its London coach company connector East Kent buses, the local mainstream bus operator in Kent, which became nationalised and thus the airline ended up half state-owned. When the ministry turned down a request for winter funding that was the end, and I believe they shut down for a couple of months before Dan-Air took them on. Eric Rylands, longstanding MD from back in the major Skyways company in the 1950s, then started again and took on the cargo DC-3s, funded by some major cross-channel freight forwarders as described above, carrying on initially the same services as before - this had always been a separate but parallel Skyways area of business, to Beauvais, Antwerp, etc, sharing the night operations at Lympne.