British Overseas Air Charter

[Skylion]

Pre 1971 BOAC always operated spare time charters under its own name. The volume ebbed and flowed depending on aircraft availability, so it was at a high when the airline had surplus Britannias in the early/mid 60s and again in the early 70s as the arrival of the 747s began to displace 707s in particular.
In 1971 BOAC was facing a mass attack on its Australian market by cariers such as Lloyd International, Caledonian, Malaysia's Southern Cross with 707s and even Britannia with 737s. They would offer low fares to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, leaving BOAC to pick them up (often on waitlisted or open tickets which had little chance of confirmation) for the onward sector to Australia. They also ate into BOACs business in South East Asia itself. As result, British Overseas Air Charter, and its selling arm, Overseas Air Travel, were set up as separate entities although the aircraft were owned and operated by BOAC , incuding BOAC crews. It was in its time,- when IATA ruled and imposed a high fares straitjacket on the industry,- a revolutionary, bold and legally fraught move though backed by the UK Government as the first breakthrough into publicly available cheap long haul fares. BOAC was allowed to operate to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore as "exempt" charters with no affinity group-ie spurious club membership required. On the Kuala Lumpur route it was a joint venture with the newly established MAS who had just been ditched as a partner in MSA by Singapore as a prelude to SIA emerging as a separate carrier.A similar operation at the same time was set up in Hong Kong but there affinity rules were maintained so it was a joint operation with a new company Eupo-Air (which still exists) who sold the seats. The Chinese Social Club of Europe was set up as the club. It was aimed primarily at the Chinese market. Eupo Air expanded into Europe with connecting flights on BEA/BA at highly competitive levels. Most of the rest of BOAC/BA (this was the time of the merger) charters were operated as before by the charter branch of the airline itself. Some people were seconded from one company to the other but the lines were always blurred and they sat in the same offices anyway. The exempt charter and British Overseas Air Charter operations only lasted a couple of years before they were replaced by low fare blocks on scheduled 747 services. Eupo charters lasted a bit longer but also progressively moved from being dedicated 707s to seat blocks (normally a whole cabin zone) on normal 747 scheduled services between London and Hong Kong. BA abandoned this concept around 2003 and the residual business is now carried by other airlines or books direct with BA kn the normal way.

BOAC, often portrayed as a moribund nationalised company ,was no slouch in the world of competition and , as this saga shows,-was often very proactive . Together with Earlybird fares , which most of the rest of the industry opposed, it pioneered low cost worldwide long haul travel. It was not afraid of breaking the mould and did so but without the self publicist fanfares of the likes of Laker.