Originally Posted by
WHBM
I believe the Regency Class seat vendor was left with a large unpaid debt at the bankruptcy of the airline.
I don't know if Laker were around long enough to do charters to Orlando. Their other Skytrain destinations were in fact just roll ups of long standing charter destinations, originally affinity group going right back to the 1969 programme and 707s inherited from British Eagle at the latter's failure and later ABCs!
Laker went to MIA and also TPA from LGW MAN and PIK.
The UK-MCO Orlando boom really came about later on around 1988 >
Virgin 747's on charter flights at first, 2 a week for Virgin Holidays and Thomson Holidays sharing, plus the 757 ETOPS started with AMM AE and MON.
BY's 757 and then 767 ETOPS came a couple of years later.
Caledonian with the Tristars and BCAL Charter/Novair with the DC-10's.
Clapped out old ex PAA 747-100's were op by Lion Air/Orion Air/Tower Air flying for AIH and AE.
Lionair was created by Cargolux in 1988 and obtained several Pan American Boeing 747-121 aircraft, and flew them with high density seating of 492 -505 passengers.
Lionair won a major contract tour company Airtours, operating long haul Caribbean and Florida routes.
This was the start of an unusual arrangement with the use of various operating licences which the company needed to operate legally from the UK.
Both of the Boeing 747s were deployed in the UK for the Airtours flying programme. The main base of Lionair was Manchester International Airport but the company also operated long-haul flights out of London Stansted Airport. The company employed multinational flight deck crews and predominantly British and Irish cabin crew, some of whom came from the recently collapsed Highland Express Airways. Both aircraft had liveries of red, white and blue with the "winged Lionhead" logo on the tail fin.
When operating the Caribbean routes to Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo, Barbados and Antigua, the company adopted the name Caribbean Airways The National Airline of Barbados for one of its aircraft for licensing reasons. For similar reasons, when operating the Orlando, Florida route, the sister 747 used name of the US airline Orionair. This caused much confusion as some passengers thought they were flying with the British Charter airline Orion Airways of East Midlands.
Lionair began to experience a string of long delays due to aircraft technical issues, sometimes its Airtours holiday passengers stranded for days. In 1989, Airtours decided to terminate its long-haul flying programme with the company.
AE leased N751PA from Orion to fly to Bangkok, Acapulco, Orlando and Barbados from LGW and MAN, IIRC around 1988/89.
Then N602FF was leased from Tower Air.
I think ATA Tristars and some other US charter airlines with DC-8's etc also began Orlando flights around then.