Basically it was Hunting-Clan and Airwork who were allowed to start low-fare services to East, and later West, Africa. They started initially in the early 1950s with Vikings, which needed a huge number of tech stops along the way, then advanced to Viscounts.
These two airlines merged in 1960 to form the core of British United who introduced Britannias and ultimately VC-10s on the routes. It ended up as an independent alternative to BOAC/BA. Until the VC-10s came along they were usually one step behing BOAC in equipment.
Frequency was always low, a couple of times a week at most. The operators were always bursting to add service. In the beginning Hunting and Airwork did a weekly operation which they alternated between each other, fortnightly each. As far as crewing goes they did extended nightstops each night as well as the intermediate fuel stops and I get the impression the same crew did the whole round trip (which took the best part of a week) in one go.
The conditions were fairly tightly controlled. Most of the passengers were actually travelling on UK government business anyway, colonial officers and their families forming the bulk of the loads. Anybody on business tended to go BOAC.
Just about to leave the country for a few days but I have plenty of timetables and history, dates etc in my collection.
*Edit - Aha ! Just sat here ready to go and remembered I have a file here on my Notebook !
1956 timetable, all Vickers Viking.
Weekly. 0915 Mondays AW/HC401 :
Heathrow - Biarritz - Tangier - Agadir - Villa Cisneros - Bathurst - Freetown - Takoradi - Accra
Twice-weekly 0845 Wednesdays/Fridays AW/HC 301 :
Heathrow - Nice - Malta - Tripoli - Wadi Halfa - Khartoum - Juba - Entebbe - Taba - Ndola - Lusaka - Salisbury
Thrice-weekly 0830 Tue/Thu/Sat AW/HC 101 :
Heathrow - Nice - Malta - Tripoli - Wadi Halfa - Khartoum - Juba - Entebbe - Nairobi
Last edited by WHBM; 24th May 2007 at 13:49.