Originally Posted by
captain.speaking
I'm researching the non-scheduled operations of various British Independent carriers in the summer of 1967, and am lacking data on the Autair HS748 and Ambassador operations during that season.
Any such research obviously starts with Tony Merton-Jones' book.
1967 was the last non-jet year for Autair - the One-Elevens started to arrive in 1968. They were building up their scheduled services as well as charters.
Their fleet was very mixed in this year. The Heralds had arrived, in addition to the 748s and Ambassadors, and the Bristol Freighter, the last of the Dakotas and the last two Vikings were still laying around, not certain how much use these got, if any.
Their main charter base was Luton, unlike other operators of the time they didn't particularly spread themselves round the country (Clarksons used Dan-Air for a lot of their various provincial departures). They did operate out of Bristol/Cardiff this year, then lost it, but Court returned there later.
They also operated in a bit of a different way to other holiday operators. The other major ones would tend to do a Saturday morning from Luton or Gatwick etc to Palma, then a Sunday night, then a Saturday night, etc, as they built up over time. Clarksons would just get Autair to do a Saturday morning from Luton, then duplicate it, then triplicate it, etc, as loads required, so in high season the bulk of the charter fleet might set off from Luton for the same trip pretty much together. With Court Line this was part of the rationale for buying the Tristars, because they built up a number of points which three or more One-Elevens would serve together. What this overlooked (and it was surprising that this was so) was that whereas you might do this in August, you could be down to a single One-Eleven on the run in May or October. This worked OK where costs were principally by the hour - don't operate all the fleet, don't get many of the costs, but the Tristar was of course indivisible in this way out of peak season, and there had been some over-optimistic expectation of how business might build up outside the school holidays - the season was much narrower in time 35-40 years ago.